T-Mobile is offering its 5G gateway as a backup option for internet outages

T-Mobile’s big home internet push continues, now with a new way to sign up for the service: as a backup option.

The company is offering a new Home Internet Backup plan starting at $30 per month (including an autopay discount) that’s designed to supplement your cable or fiber internet connection in the event of an outage. Seems handy if your internet is down a lot! But it also seems like overkill for most people, especially considering that most of T-Mobile’s phone plans already come with plenty of mobile hotspot data.

Like T-Mobile’s standard home internet service, the backup plan comes with a gateway router that connects to T-Mobile’s cellular data network. The backup internet plan comes with up to 130GB of 5G data each month, which T-Mobile’s website says is “enough to keep a typical household connected with Wi-Fi for up to seven days a month.” Depending on your primary router, you could set up T-Mobile Wi-Fi as an automatic fallback option when your main internet connection goes down.

Useful for sure — but probably only appealing to a small demographic. Switching to a phone hotspot when the internet goes down isn’t a huge burden for most people, and even T-Mobile’s basic Essentials plan comes with some hotspot data. If all you want to do is stay connected, you’ve already got options. But if your primary internet goes down a lot and you need a more robust connection than a phone hotspot provides, maybe $30 per month is worth it.

T-Mobile’s Home Internet Backup plan will be available for sale starting tomorrow, June 6th.