You used to be out of luck when the internet would go down, being at the complete mercy of the provider, forced to wait an unknown amount of time before you’d be able to resume whatever it was that you were doing online. But now, there are lots of options, with wireless carrier services being able to pick up the slack with phones offering tethering and mobile hotspot functionality.
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No more worrying about extended outages
With that said, AT&T is introducing a new service that will allow its home internet users to stay online even when fiber services go offline. According to the carrier, this is a rare occurrence since it has a “99.9% proven reliability” rate, but it’s still giving users the option of getting cellular coverage in times when fiber home internet service just isn’t working right.
Just four easy steps to get setup
The Internet Backup feature is meant to provide seamless internet service, with devices switching from fiber to cellular without the user taking any action. For the most part, users don’t really need to do much to activate this feature.
Just have the proper gateway (BGW320 model) and an unlimited wireless internet plan with AT&T. There will be an update going out for the gateway that will activate this feature. And once the update for the device goes live, it’s just a matter of getting things setup in the app.
You can see how this process will work in the image above. Once this feature is enabled, the cellular internet backup will automatically kick in whenever there is service disruption. There is no additional cost for this service, but as stated before, it does require having an AT&T cellular plan.
Now, this plan is a little different from T-Mobile’s internet backup plan that was launched recently. AT&T’s seems reliant on the customers’ mobile data to get things working as there doesn’t seem to be additional hardware required. But if it works, I guess there’s really nothing to complain about here.
