Help a newb (BT)

Hello all

Can someone give some advice?

BT offer a £10 a month service which they call their 'complete wifi' where as far as I can tell they send you a Wi-Fi disc to boost the coverage of your router. But over a 2 year contract (and longer) this works out at £240. While their Whole Home WiFI standalone package costs £169 and gives 3 discs.

So, my question is, are these the same discs? Are they just finding a way to give you the same equipment as their standalone deal but charging you more via subscription (like having a mobile handset in your monthly phone deal?)?

It's really hard to work this out.

Alternatively, if someone wants to just lay out an easier system (what broadband to get and what mesh to use with it), I'd be very happy.

Thanks in advance.

First question to ask yourself is, do I need it?

Depending on the property, rented or owned, I would recommend buying PoE Access Points for wifi distribution.

It's a similar concept but it's not the same product. Whole Home Wi-Fi is a pack of discs similar to what Google Wi-Fi, Eero, TP Link etc. can offer. It's a product you buy and it plugs into your existing router and handles the Wi-Fi for you.

The Complete Wi-Fi is a service that only works with BT Broadband and meshes to the Smart Hub. If you're still having Wi-Fi issues then BT will send you up to two more discs for a total of three. If you are still having problems after that then they give you £100.

If you're technical enough to have found this forum and are considering owning your own kit and paying for it up-front then I'd recommend going down that route and having your Wi-Fi separate from your broadband provider to keep the barriers to migration low.

I had the Smart Hub 2 and Wi-Fi disc as part of a trial and was very happy with it, but I'm not sure I'd pay monthly for it when the alternative is owning the devices of my choosing.

The wifi discs that you can get from Complete Wifi are also able to be bought separately. I bought a couple on ebay over a year ago for £130 (2 separate purchases). That for me was better than paying BT monthly and I own the discs so if I change solution in future I can always put them on ebay to sell them on.

Thanks for this.

This makes sense.

I'm not on BT yet, I'm still with Sky which is driving nuts with drop out and as far as I can tell from reading doesn't play nicely with 3rd party additions.

The BT solution (just give them some money each month and they make a guarantee of whole home coverage) is tempting but I'd be happy just to know a good provider whose package provided router can act as a modem for some good system I'd happily pay money for if it just worked.

Thanks for the advice.

It also guarantees the WiFi coverage within your home so that if one Wi-Fi Disc doesn’t give you wi-fi in every corner, they’ll send you up to three discs for free. If that doesn’t do it, you can get £100 back.

Post deleted by seb

Edited by Thornhill5 (Tue 08-Mar-22 20:49:36)