BT Home Hub 3.0 and BT Total Broadband Welcome Pack FOR BT ONLY

I was previously with Sky, their supplied router was less than spectacular, but at least it worked. This BT Home Hub 3 offers slightly better speed, but is highly unreliable, the signal frequently drops and the range of the device is terrible.

Originally I thought it was a faulty device, turns out they are all as bad.

In a word, poor.

This router was included in the package when I (very recently) had BT Infinity broadband installed, so I'll review it as part of the Infinity package. I used it to replace a Belkin N wireless router.

The hub was set up by the engineer, and the whole package seems to work well. I got a download speed of 37Mb over a wired connection to my desktop, and 34Mb over wireless to a laptop. The wireless laptop is about 10m away, but that's through a thick solid wall and a ceiling. It's fantastic after my previous 'up to 8Mb' speed of 0.5Mb - 1.5Mb.

I've got a network attached drive, and (provided I turn Windows auto-update off) the wireless laptop plays FLAC files without stuttering. This is an improvement over the Belkin, which occasionally stuttered, though I've maybe just been lucky avoiding network contention so far. I can now watch YouTube on the telly in real time when I link up to my laptop.

The instruction manual is minimalist and fairly useless, though I suspect that's because BT doesn't want its customers changing the base settings. However, the Home Hub software lets you change all the settings fairly easily. You need to go into advanced settings to give your network (SSID) a more memorable name.

So what's not to like? Well, quite a bit.

The Hub does not include an Infinity modem. This is a separate device called the Openreach modem, which links the telephone socket to the Hub. BT's literature says that this modem/hub combination is the only way to connect to Infinity. I suspect this means the only way sanctioned by BT.

Idle, the combined hub/modem uses somewhere between 11-15W more power than my old Belkin Router, which is well over a tenner a year. The hub claims to have an 'energy saving' mode, where you can switch off the wireless antenna for your own chosen time period, but this has no effect on power consumption. The Infinity brochure claims the Hub is the most energy efficient yet etc. etc. This is disingenuous as it can't operate without the modem.

The Hub has 1*1Gig Ethernet socket, and the rest are 100, so you'll still need a 1Gig switch if you want the fastest connection. I can't understand the tight-fistedness of this.

The Hub is only a single band wireless router, so you'll get interference if you live in a dense housing area. The Hub claims to switch channels on the fly if the channel you're on becomes busy, but it's not an effective solution in a busy area. My network download speed dropped from 34Mb to 10Mb in the evening when locals returned and started using their own networks.

In summary, I strongly recommend the Infinity package. However, I wouldn't buy the Hub as a standalone router. Although it is an improvement on my old router, if you just need a new router I think you'd be better paying the extra for a dual band model.

I've been having problems with my home hub 1,now 6 year old, having to continually reset it. Reading other reviews I decided to update to this device, I now wonder why I did not do it before. Desktop hard wired & laptop wireless both working well with no interuptions. Would thouroughly reccomend.