BT Router

I'm finally conceding defeat and changing from an excellent ISP to BT Broadband to save £10 per month.
I have an extremely good Netgear N300 DGN2200 Router that has never given me a moments problem, but the BT package comes with their own router.
Heavily advertised obviously. I know you can select an option to use your own router when applying, but for £6.95 carriage, I thought I would at least have a look at it.
A mate of mine who is a bit of a tech head has advised me to stick with the Netgear.
I don't change over until mid July, so I have pleanty of time to mull it over.
I would appreciate any feedback from anyone who has gone through the change or anyone else really.

Use whichever you want ... there are good and bad reports about the new BT Hub4. If you like the Netgear then stick with it and keep teh BT as a spare or use it as a second wireless access point

Also having their supplied router as a spare will make any support calls easier as you can check with their own hardware and avoid the 'it is your router at fault' answer

For the cost of delivery, the BT HomeHub is worthwhile.

Whilst using your own Router will probably be better, if you ever get BB problems, it is always better to be able to revert to the ISP Router to eliminate "Red-Herrings"!

I'm assuming that BT supply the settings to set up your own router.

In reply to a post by woodroyd:

I'm assuming that BT supply the settings to set up your own router.

I believe they will, but these are NOT specific to yourself & can be advised from a number of sources.

For various reasons, I substituted my HomeHub for a Netgear with no problems!

Doesn't that mean you no longer have access to the network of free BT WiFi hotspots?

Set it up on the BT router before changing it out ...

I signed up for the WiFi hotspots via the website whilst I had a non-NT router connected. Seems to be working fine (although can't remember exactly where I selected the option - I think it was from the main account page, you select the broadband button about half way down and at the bottom of the next screen it has all the "extras" such as cloud and I think one of those is BT WiFi).

In reply to a post by gomezz:

Doesn't that mean you no longer have access to the network of free BT WiFi hotspots?

No, you are signed up for that regardless of the Router that you use!!

However, if you don't use the BT Router then "others" cannot use it!

In reply to a post by MHC:

Set it up on the BT router before changing it out ...

Seconded.

There's nothing to set up, new customers are opted-in automagically. Also, the username is [email protected] with no password so the router just plugs in and is usable right away.

But the map which shows you where the hotspots are will not know they are non-operative? Not good.

Edited by gomezz (Tue 25-Jun-13 12:14:02)

I agree there, but the point is to ensure right at the start that that does happen, rather than when needing to swap it in for some reason finding it is/was DOA or problematical in some other way.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 25-Jun-13 12:19:30)

They might be "opted in" but there was a need for the username to be registered. Certainly on the business side, using a non-BT router at start-up did not enable the facility. Connecting the BT router for a few hours was all that was needed.

In reply to a post by MHC:

They might be "opted in" but there was a need for the username to be registered. Certainly on the business side, using a non-BT router at start-up did not enable the facility. Connecting the BT router for a few hours was all that was needed.

Why?

The BT Username is never needed, for the Router, so is never entered!

In reply to a post by gomezz:

But the map which shows you where the hotspots are will not know they are non-operative? Not good.

Don't worry, the maps are very inaccurate!

A friend of mine, who uses a BT HomeHub (& has for years) is NOT shown on the Maps, neither am I (using a Netgear).

So far it seems that whenever I am in a poor mobile reception area when wanting to check emails, browse etc then there is also a dearth of wifi hotspots anyway. Not a big reason why I moved to BT anyway so not that fussed.