Alternative network provider Truespeed, which is building a gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across rural parts of South West England, appears to be moving away from their heavily restricted routers of old and have today launched a new WiFi 6 router from Linksys and optional Mesh system.
The operator, which has so far covered 50,000 premises (including 11,500 customers connected) and holds an “ambitious” target to reach 500,000 properties by the end of 2026, is currently being funded by a £175 million investment from Aviva and most of their deployments have taken place across Somerset.
However, Truespeed are also known – like a few other AltNet providers – for shipping a heavily restrict router to their customers, which is something that made the news last year and for all the wrong reasons (here). But the good news is that the ISP has signed a new partnership with Linksys, which means that subscribers will now benefit from Wi-Fi 6 capable kit (router and mesh systems).
The new hardware also includes some added benefits, such as parental and device control to safeguard children’s online activity 24-7, guest Wi-Fi for up to 50 people and the ability to change Wi-Fi name and password all through a convenient app.
James Lowther, Truespeed CEO, said:
“We’re passionate about providing our customers with the very best connectivity and we’re thrilled to have launched our new Wi-Fi 6 router and Mesh Wi-Fi solution. This enables customers to experience the power of ultrafast full-fibre broadband all around their house and eliminate Wi-Fi blackspots.
Linksys is the perfect partner as it not only offers excellent Wi-Fi performance, but it also enables customers to control their experience from an easy to use app.”
The catch is that their new Linksys router is only being provided “as standard” on Truespeed’s 300Mbps package and above. Existing customers and people taking 150Mbps products can upgrade their router, but it’ll cost you an additional £40 activation fee (one-off).
The optional Mesh Wi-Fi nodes can also be added for just £7 per month (inc. VAT) on a monthly rolling contract, although you could also buy these independently of Truespeed, but then you’d lose the support benefits if the kit goes wrong.
This Linksys Mesh system gives very poor coverage in old brick wall homes.
@John I would think that all mesh systems do unless they have a wired backhaul but that’s not how they’re sold.
It is not even that, they have very ineffective internal antennas providing very little coverage compared to these with external antennas.
Slightly off-topic but Ofcom should take inspiration from Italy and mandate ISPs to not actively prevent customers using their own router and provide some configuration support too. It’s sad you can’t really use your own router with a lot of ISPs if you have VOIP and want to use it because the ATA is integrated in the router itself.
I’m looking at the second largest ISP especially :/
I appreciate the opposing argument too because of my employment but there are certainly ways to do this.
But there is always a risk John Doe will buy a router from Currys that actually performs worse than his ISP provided CPE and then has a go at call centre agents which is too much for business analysts.
Since a breakdown in my phone line and a very noisy phone,while waiting for plusnet to solve the problem, they rerouted my landline phone calls to my mobile phone. Why is this not a prefered route to take instead of voip ?
Surely it is cost effective to do this,and if not, why not?
Not much point in this if the network is a shambles and half their staff leave
Is port forwarding now possible or is it just the ability to change SSID, password, guest WiFi – which is pointless and enable a parental firewall.
Are they still blocking using your own router?….
I had no end of issues connecting my previous router to Sky Q box. Received this in the post today and all resolved. Big Win for Truespeed
Is there any detail on what model they are providing. The linksys stuff all looks the same.
Also £20 for some dongle to connect the phone line to the router
This article mentions you can buy your own mesh nodes instead of renting from Truespeed for £7 per month (!). But I can’t see any mention of this on their website. Can someone confirm? I would also like to know if they have wired backhaul and about the port forwarding that someone else mentioned, too.