Local vs. National Carrier
Coverage and real-world speeds are everything. STI delivers 400 Mbps purpose-built for rural South Texas.
| Feature | South Texas Internet | T-Mobile Home Internet |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $65/month | $50–$70/month (w/AutoPay + voice line) |
| Availability in rural South TX | Purpose-built coverage | Limited — address-specific eligibility |
| Real-world download (South TX) | 400 Mbps | Typically 87–200 Mbps |
| Real-world upload (South TX) | 25 Mbps | Typically 12–15 Mbps |
| Data | Truly unlimited | Unlimited, may deprioritize after 1.2TB |
| Contract | None | None |
| Equipment fee | $0 | Gateway included |
| Installation | 1 business day | Self-install, ships in 2–5 days |
| Network type | Dedicated fixed wireless | Shared 5G cellular network |
| Support | Local team — Hondo, TX | National T-Mobile support |
T-Mobile advertises typical speeds of 133–498 Mbps nationally. In rural South Texas — Medina, Atascosa, Frio, and surrounding counties — customers typically see download speeds of 87–200 Mbps, rarely higher, and upload speeds of 12–15 Mbps. Performance also fluctuates based on time of day, how many T-Mobile phone users are on the same tower, and distance from the nearest cell site.
STI's Velocity 400 delivers 400 Mbps down and 25 Mbps up. That's a dedicated fixed wireless connection — not a shared cellular signal — built specifically for the terrain and communities of South Texas.
T-Mobile Home Internet requires a stronger, more concentrated 5G signal than regular phone service. You can have T-Mobile cell service at your address and still not qualify for home internet because the tower signal isn't dense enough for residential broadband. In our coverage area — Hondo, Castroville, Devine, Lytle, Dilley, Sabinal, and 30+ surrounding communities — T-Mobile Home Internet availability is limited and inconsistent. STI's Air Fiber was built specifically for these communities.
T-Mobile Home Internet shares the same 5G cellular network as every T-Mobile phone customer in the area. During high-traffic periods, home internet customers experience reduced speeds due to congestion and data deprioritization. STI's Air Fiber uses dedicated fixed wireless infrastructure — your connection isn't competing with every T-Mobile phone user on the local tower.
Where T-Mobile Home Internet is available and the signal is strong, it's a competitive product. Pricing starts as low as $35/month with AutoPay and a T-Mobile voice line. Self-install means no waiting for a technician. If T-Mobile's eligibility checker says yes at your address and you already have a T-Mobile voice plan, it's worth evaluating. But if it says no — STI is the purpose-built alternative for rural South Texas.
T-Mobile Home Internet runs on the same cell towers that handle your phone calls and mobile data. Those towers were designed and built for mobile usage — voice, text, and the kind of data a phone uses throughout the day. Repurposing them as a home broadband connection means you're sharing that tower capacity with every other device connected to it. During peak hours in the evenings, on weekends, or after a local event draws a crowd, that shared bandwidth shrinks. Speed tests done at 2am often look nothing like what a household actually gets at 7pm when the whole family is online. T-Mobile's network is nationwide and genuinely fast in some areas, but the towers serving rural South Texas were not dimensioned for replacing home broadband across entire communities.
The advertised $50/month price requires AutoPay and an active T-Mobile voice line. If you don't already have a T-Mobile cell plan, the price is $70/month — five dollars more per month than STI, for a shared cellular connection with no speed guarantee in rural areas. For residents who use AT&T, Verizon, or no carrier at all, T-Mobile Home Internet at its actual price isn't the deal the advertising implies. STI's $65/month is the full price, taxes included, no phone plan required, no AutoPay discount that disappears if your card changes.
In practice, availability is where T-Mobile Home Internet most often fails rural households. The service requires a strong enough 5G signal at your specific address to sustain home broadband — stronger than what phone service needs. You can have T-Mobile bars on your phone and still get rejected by the eligibility checker because the local tower can't support another home internet customer. Anything outside a town center, on a county road, or more than half a mile from a cell tower is likely to fail that check. STI was built specifically for those addresses. Our coverage footprint includes the county roads, rural routes, and unincorporated communities between towns that T-Mobile's infrastructure doesn't reach.
T-Mobile's terms of service allow for speed reduction after 1.2TB of data consumption during periods of network congestion. For a household streaming 4K video on two screens, with one person working from home and another gaming, 1.2TB is gone in roughly ten to fourteen days. After that threshold, the network can legally deprioritize your traffic during congestion — meaning the slowdowns happen exactly when the network is busiest and your household is most likely to notice. STI's unlimited plan has no threshold, no fine print about deprioritization after a certain amount of data, and no congestion clause. Unlimited means the same thing at 1TB as it does at 4TB.
400 Mbps. Installed in one business day. $65/month flat.
(830) 429-4149