BROADBAND

Any smart home needs decent internet speeds… and your ISP might be able to help you out with an upgrade

It feels like a monopoly. BT subsidiary Openreach maintains the majority of Britain’s fibre network, BT is also the UK’S biggest broadband provider, and it owns Plusnet and EE. Only Virgin Media has a dedicated rival fibre network – so even if you’re with Talktalk, Sky or another provider, the likelihood is you’re still living in the shadow of London’s phallic tower.

Most BT fibre customers get a bundled Smart Hub router; but if your postcode has 145Mbps+ speeds you can sign up for BT Halo and receive one of these, the Smart Hub 2. And we’ve been using it for a few months.

BANDS ON THE RUN

Compared to most ISPS’ bundled routers, the sleek and slim Smart Hub 2 is fairly modern and can be coupled with BT’S Complete Wi-fi mesh system. It’s 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ dual-band, has seven antennas, and adds DECT functionality so it works with BT cordless phones without needing yet another hub. Nice, but not exactly pub bragging rights.

The proof is in the performance, and the Smart Hub 2 improves on its predecessor by maintaining stronger Wi-fi signal strengths and being happily capable of juggling numerous connected devices. The only problem is, there’s no WPA3 encryption or Wi-fi 6 support (see p54) to futureproof you… and those beefier specs are useful when splitting bandwidth across multiple devices as they mean less slowdown from your gadgets – a key smart home battleground.

That said, BT has a pretty good record among providers for being ahead of the curve with its kit, so we might see both features on the Smart Hub 3.