Firmware Update Causes Problems for BT’s Whole Home Wi-Fi

Customers of UK broadband ISP BT who purchased the Whole Home Wi-Fi solution, which uses three 165mm circular (disc) shaped repeaters in an effort to deliver “complete” WiFi network coverage around the home, are suffering connectivity problems after a firmware update (v1.02.04 build10).

The update began to rollout toward the end of February 2018 and this introduced a change which, according to one of BT’s support agents, was intended to ensure that the discs were “checking the best connection more often and will also prefer daisy chain in more cases.”

Unfortunately what customers actually experienced was a variety of internet connection problems, which could often be temporarily resolved by rebooting the system a few times. A post on BT’s Community Forum and a report on The Register help to illustrate how this has affected their service (sample below).

BT Customer DavR0s said:

“You can add my name to the list of people experiencing problems. Been running 4discs fine for 3 months and did the latest upgrade – big big mistake. Endless problems. Been tearing my hair out having spent nigh £400 on this kit and only just came to this thread. Sounds like BT know there is a problem and given the likelihood of no imminent release astonished they are not prepared to rerelease the previous firmware. I’ve now down the factory reset of everything and one disc is now red lighting so no idea what to do with that. If it continues much longer I’ll be sending the whole lot back as I purchased this to solve my wifi problem.”

BT Customer richdavies1950 said:

“My problems seem to be similar to everyone’s. All devices suddenly stop working. The system shows as working but there is no internet connectivity. Tried system reset, changing channels etc, firmware is up to date, discs still need rebooting at least twice daily. I was in touch with someone at BT by email but this communication has now stopped. I suspect there are 1000s of customers with these issues. The product should not be for sale if it does not work properly. Come on BT sort it!!”

BT Customer JWinBirmingham said:

“I too have 4 discs which operated perfectly for months before this latest firmware update. Since then internet connectivity is always lost within a few hours, with otherwise happy blue light discs. I have found that I can keep connectivity up & running by limping along in ‘repeater mode’, i.e with just the master disc and 1 satellite disc turned on only. This of course defeats the point of a mesh network and leaves me with very poor coverage.

As many contributors have suggested BT really should take the unusual step of rolling back the firmware to it’s previous functional but buggy build until such time they can get it right. It is really unacceptable to leave so many customers hanging like this.”

Disgruntled customers suggest that there are currently two temporary workarounds, which you can try when the crash occurs. The first is to simply turn the master disc off and back on again (unplug it for a minute or so before powering back up) and the second is to turn everything off except the master disc.

The problem will usually return again within a day or so and officially BT doesn’t expect a firmware fix to drop as soon as some would like.

Dan-O, BT Devices Expert, told customers:

“We’re working our hardest on a fix for the issue you and some other customers are experiencing and to release an update as soon as possible, following our release process. There is no definitive answer on timescales at this stage but it will not be in days. I would suggest in the meantime to contact the helpdesk who can provide options.”

Separately another spokesperson for BT stated that only a “small number of customers have been having problems with their Whole Home Wi-Fi,” although the term “small” should be taken in the context of a provider that has 9.3 million broadband subscribers. Sadly there are no official statistics for how many Whole Home Wi-Fi systems the operator has sold or what proportion of this have been affected.

So for the time being it looks as if BT’s claim of the system being able to offer “superfast, super-reliable Wi-Fi for every room” (as per the Amazon Product Page) isn’t quite accurate for everybody.