My 5G connection is trash, but I just switched up Google Fi, which is using T-Mobile's network.
Inside my apartment pictures on websites are loading like it's the early 2000's again.
I'm in a major city, I thought that would help.
Visible is a deprioritized version of Verizon's cellular network, so when your on a busy tower you will see slower speeds than postpaid Verizon Wireless customers. Verizon also happens to have the slowest network over the last few years since they have the most customers using it (nearly 130 million users) and smaller spectrum holdings than the other two major cellular networks.
Verizon also chose to deploy 5G service using spectrum sharing, so 4G and 5G speeds are very similar: https://www.zdnet.com/article/verizon-5g-dss-isnt-the-5g-you...
T-Mobile is using dedicated (and much larger sized) low and midband spectrum for their 5G connectivity, plus they have almost half as many customers, resulting in much faster speeds.
That being said 5G is still in its infancy, 5G Standalone is really needed to lower your phone's power use (so its not connecting to LTE and 5G at the same time), reduce latency and jitter, and allow 5G to stretch further for a more stable connection.
I'm on a Pixel 7. Honestly I'd like to try disabling 5G but haven't been able to find a way yet.
My first question is whether you're on one of the new plans or one of the old plans. This is actually important because the old plans are provisioned differently. The old plans use Visible's cloud APN while the new plans run off Verizon's. A lot of people have complained that Visible's was pretty terrible. The old plans were $25/mo if you had Party Pay. The new plans start at $30, but don't require any hoops.
After that, I'd note that if you're not on the Visible+ plan, you are going to be on a lower QCI (Quality of Service Class Identifier) than most of the traffic on the network. So if others are using the network, you might experience slowness, lags, and hangs. Verizon's network isn't in the best capacity position in a lot of areas so this can be meaningful.
Verizon's low-band 5G is also not great since it uses dynamic spectrum sharing rather than having dedicated 5G spectrum.
If you're on one of the old Visible plans, I'd pay the extra $5 and get on one of the new plans. You'll need a new SIM card for it, but it's probably worth it to get off the cloud core that has generated a lot of complaints. If you're on the new $30 plan, it might be worth trying the $45 plan for a month and seeing if you get better results with the 50GB of premium data. After that, you should probably try T-Mobile or AT&T.
You can try AT&T for free using their 14-day free trial on Cricket (https://www.cricketwireless.com/free-trial.html, note that it's only 3GB of data) and you can test out T-Mobile for a whole 3 months if you have an eSIM device (https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/free-trial). If you can, it's definitely worth trying an alternative carrier since they're now offering free trials (Verizon also offers one for 30 days: https://www.verizon.com/support/verizon-test-drive-faqs/).
EDIT: as an aside, it's probably not that "higher frequencies used for 5G don't go as far or penetrate as effectively" simply because, unless you're on Visible+, you don't have access to any of those higher frequencies. Legacy Visible plans and the current $30 Visible plan only have access to low-band 5G using the same frequencies as LTE.
The IMS core that powers calling and texting on most cellular networks has not been upgraded to route calls and texts over 5G Standalone yet (or if so, it doesn't seem to work with the Pixel 6 or 7 on T-Mobile or AT&T), meaning most phones stay on 5G Non-Standalone which is a substandard experience.
This is not true. T-Mobile has been allowing voNR calls on their network for over 2 years now on SA. It's up to to the handset to have it configured in modem firmware (it is configurable on Qualcomm chipsets through EFS). AT&T appears to be allowing voNR calls since around August of last year.
As for the 5G NSA substandard experience, most phones on the market don't support SA carrier aggregation. Without that the experience sucks, This is a hardware feature you'd need a flagship phone built within past 2 years to support (new ones do 3CA, older ones do 2CA). Better to leave on NSA for these phones or stay on LTE until more spectrum refarmed to NR.
I made custom APN which removes 5g and it's just ignored =(