T-Mobile Home Internet Backup Could Keep You Online In An Outage, But You Need To Do The Math First

In March 2024, T-Mobile announced a backup internet plan for its business consumers, which lets them fall back to this secondary connection in the event of an internet outage. Nearly three months (and one acquisition of U.S. Cellular) later, the company is expanding this backup internet solution to its non-business users.

Consumers will be able to subscribe to the "T-Mobile Home Internet Backup" plan starting June 6, 2024, via T-Mobile stores. The company has also confirmed that it will have a dedicated portal that details the Home Internet Backup plan so that consumers can check out the plans in detail before subscribing to it.

If not evident already, this backup internet plan is for people who have a primary broadband connection but are worried about unexpected downtimes that may affect their ability to stay online at all times. In the event of an outage, the customer will be able to quickly switch to T-Mobile's Home Internet Backup plan.

For people who have an extremely stable primary internet connection that rarely goes down and are wondering why this plan exists, T-Mobile cites a study by CivicScience, which claims that nearly 20% of internet users in the U.S. have complained about an Internet outage at least a few times a month. T-Mobile is essentially promoting this plan as a reliable backup Wi-Fi solution that consumers will need during unexpected downtimes.

The T-Mobile Home Internet Backup plan offers subscribers 130GB of 5G data a month. The company says this is enough for up to seven days of full-fledged usage. Given that it is rare for primary internet connections to go down for more than a week (or up to seven days a month), this data cap should be sufficient for most use cases.

People subscribing to the T-Mobile Home Internet Backup Plan will receive T-Mobile's 5G gateway device, which will make the process of connecting to the 5G network a seamless process. This device is part of T-Mobile's subscription free, and the consumer is not required to pay an extra equipment fee. T-Mobile claims that the gateway device is easy to install and can be set up in less than 15 minutes after taking it out of the box.

As for pricing, the T-Mobile Home Internet Backup Plan will set users back by $30 a month. Consumers possessing an eligible T-Mobile voice line will be able to get a $10 discount on the same, letting them subscribe to this plan for a reasonable $20 a month. 

For consumers living in an area prone to frequent broadband disruptions, it would be worthwhile to check if this is a viable option by taking a look at how T-Mobile's coverage map compares to other providers. That being said, it would also be a good idea for consumers to check if there are other competitively priced backup Internet options (such as Xfinity's Storm Ready Wi-Fi plans) available in their area.