News BT reveals Home Hub 5 with ac Wi-Fi

New router will feature Wi-Fi 802.11ac and inbuilt VDSL modem.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2013/07/10/bt-reveals-home-hub-5-with-ac-wi-fi/1

 

I will probably get it to get rid of the infinity modem

 

if they are providing 802.11ac, why limit it to 300Mbps?

 

Of course, with Sky not letting you use 3rd party upgrades (they wont provide the broadband login details) your only option is to complain about the old router that they provided several years ago until they just send you the upgrade free... still not the best option but at least the broadband is totally unlimited!

 

My mistake - they haven't mentioned the max Wi-Fi bandwidth yet. Have corrected this.

 

This is what annoys me so much about being with Sky. Your forced into using their router (although its quite easy to extract the necessary details like Gareth said) which, in my opinion, is the worst router provided by the big 3.

My girlfriend relies heavily on the wireless reliability (offers of me running a ethernet cable to her room have been declined) and the Sky hub is failing miserably. The Home Hub 3 that she had before it and even a basic £30 Belkin wireless N router have performed much, much better. I've even added a Cisco wireless access point but the Sky hub seems to be taking a disliking to it and every now and then, both will need a reboot to keep working (the Cisco worked flawlessly when it was with me).

Sky really need to get their finger out and bring out something at least as good as the Home Hub 4.

Edit: Also:

 

Ooo, getting rid of the Infinity modem as well? For £35 BT can take my money!

 

was going to move to BT Infinity, may as well wait for the new home hub, hope its not a long wait though

 

Just a question as some of you seem to know more than I do. I too have Sky but I think I have a newer router from them, a small white, upright square shaped thing. When you say they are poor, are you only talking about the WiFi capabilities? So is it still fine if you connect directly using a cable?

 

Offer her some homeplugs?

 

That'll be the Sky Hub. I've got one with Sky's equivalent of BT's Infinity and my PC is hardwired in and it's fine. The wireless range is poor though, even compared to my older Sky router which had similar specs.

I've tried that too but she's too tight. I'll probably get them as one of her birthday presents if my old Sky router, which I've just sent to her, doesn't work out.

Plus, her house's wiring is a mix of the standard twin and earth and the older stuff which is just the individual live, earth and neutral like thinner meter tails so I'm not sure how well the homeplugs will work. I might get them from Amazon and return them if they don't perform well enough.

 

Yeah, let us know how that works out for you

 

*witty response not found*

She's tight in the wallet area then. Better?

 

They have, the new'ish white sky hub is brill they make these them selves, no netgear or sagem are being sent out to new customers.

 

I'll stick to my own routers thanks, I don't like using routers with crippled or locked-down firmware, plus I'm sure my Asus RT-AC66U with its three streams and big antennas will beat the pants off this HomeHub in wireless performance easily.

Also "the first Hub to feature four gigabit Ethernet ports" is a massive indictment of how crap the current BT routers really are.

 

I will probably get rinsed for saying this, but I think my provider, Talk Talk, are currently killing it on the value stakes. Their fibre package undercuts everyone so plus an aftermarket router paid for out of the savings (I use the Asus RT-N66U) is actually really good. I noticed the quality of the service, particularly streaming and downloads increased recently, then I found out they have removed their traffic management limits for unlimited fibre users. As long as you never call their customer service team I think they are great.

 

I never even attempted to use the WiFi on my SR101, first thing I did when I set it up was disable it and use my own access points. So far reliability-wise the it's been totally fine for me, it's not needed restarting once in the six months I've had it. It's been 100% solid and doesn't run hot enough to fry an egg on like the god awful glitchy Sagem POS they sent me when I was on ADSL.
I would like to be able use my own third party router but honestly, it'd make no real difference other than possibly looking a bit nicer?!

 

I can see the appeal of combining the VDSL modem and the router into a single device for 'normal' users but that would be a total deal-breaker for me (annoying since I was thinking of getting Infinity when I move next).

If they go down this road I hope the device will have a 'modem mode' toggle like Virgin added to their cable modem/router device...