The Quality of an ISP’s Bundled Broadband Router Does Matter

The latest survey of 2,725 ISPreview.co.uk readers has found that the quality of the router that big broadband ISPs bundle with their Internet access packages does have an impact on whether consumers choose a particular provider, with 36.9% saying it was important to their choice. But most would also like more choice.

As a rule most ISPs that bundle a router with their broadband product will only include hardware based off a cheaper chipset with fewer advanced features, although the recent addition of Gigabit Ethernet (LAN) ports and 802.11ac WiFi by many of the largest ISPs is beginning to change that (e.g. BT’s HomeHub 5, TalkTalk’s Super Router, EE’s BrightBox 2 and Virgin Media’s SuperHub 2AC).

Never the less many consumers still prefer to buy their own, usually more advanced, kit in the shops and as a result 69.8% support the idea of consumers being given an option for whether or not to take the ISPs bundled router or save money on the sign-up by using their own kit.

Is the quality of an ISPs bundled broadband router/modem important to your choice of provider?
Yes – 36.9%
No – 35.1%
Don’t Know – 27.9%

In your view, which big ISP has the best bundled home broadband router?
Virgin Media – 37.5%
TalkTalk – 26.8%
Don’t Know – 16.2%
BT – 10%
Sky Broadband – 6.8%
EE – 2.4%

Should big ISPs offer an option to save money by not forcing you to take their bundled router (i.e. use your own device)?
Yes – 69.8%
No – 30.1%

The results are interesting, although ISPs could face a difficult task in weighing the desire for more choice against the fact that bundled routers also make providing support for end-users far easier, not least by offering a common platform and fixes via remotely managed firmware updates.

On top of that it’s clear that some providers, such as those like Sky Broadband and it’s somewhat dated SR101/102 router, could be missing a trick by failing to offer kit with Gigabit ports and more capable WiFi (e.g. Sky has yet to add 5GHz support). Others, such as PlusNet, have a similar problem and even their latest Hub Zero (Sagemcom 2704n) seems to fall behind the times (here). On the other hand one advantage of lower spec kit is that the energy usage remains minimal, which is good for electricity bills.

Finally, for a bit of fun, we also asked our readers to vote for which of the big ISPs they thought had the best hardware and Virgin Media came top. In fairness it’s actually quite difficult to judge this one because many providers will often ship several different models of router, which makes it tricky to do a simple like-for-like comparison. It’s also perhaps more likely that people voted through the viewpoint of perception rather than experience, since it’s unlikely that all of the respondents would have been able to test the latest routers from each ISP.

Elsewhere this month’s new survey asks what is the minimum broadband speed you would accept when buying a new house and would you pay more for a home that supported superfast broadband (24Mbps+)? Vote Here.