2018 Update – VDSL Router Choices for UK FTTC Fibre Broadband ISPs

Today we’re publishing a new summary to show some of the best home routers with integrated VDSL2 modems, which are designed to be used with superfast “fibre broadband” offering ISPs that use the superfast Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology (e.g. BT, TalkTalk, Sky Broadband, Vodafone, Plusnet etc.).

At present most of the big FTTC ISPs will give you a free bundled router with an integrated VDSL2 modem when you sign-up to their service, but often these are low-budget models or come with restricted (locked) feature sets and moderate to poor performance (see here). In that situation you may prefer to buy your own third-party device and so we’ve created this simple guide to help summarise the latest options.

Generally speaking adopting a different third-party router probably isn’t going to have a magical impact on your broadband connection, although some may deliver a small improvement to VDSL2 performance and stability. Instead a router upgrade is usually more aimed at improving your WiFi performance (see our article – 11 Top Tips for Boosting Your Home Wi-Fi Speeds) and gaining access to advanced features.

Equally a couple of the devices in today’s round-up are new revisions of routers that have already been on the market for awhile and continue to be well supported. One of the reasons for listing these is because there’s something to be said for buying a device that has had many of its early bugs ironed out.

As with our previous reports (see here, here and here) we’ve chosen to only include routers that are considered to be within a sub-£200 price bracket (ideally £150 or less) for consumer affordability. Anything more expensive than this is usually intended for business purposes or those with very deep pockets.

Likewise many of those who buy the most expensive kit may often be left disappointed when they find that the real-world WiFi performance isn’t much better than a mid-range device, unless you’re sitting in the same room as the router all the time (most of us don’t, we move around and use mobile devices from smartphones to laptops etc.).

Wireless signals can only go so far and beyond a room or two you may need to consider a range extender in order to mitigate the loss of speed, such as TP-Link’s RE350 (£35) or the high end RE650 (£99). NETGEAR also has a good set of Wi-Fi boosters (here). Meanwhile those with deep pockets and no worries about the electricity bill might prefer one of the more expensive ‘Whole Home‘ mesh solutions (examples here and here).

Integrated VDSL2/FTTC Routers – 2018 Edition

Before we get started there are a few extra things to note. Firstly, we only list devices that have both an integrated ADSL2+ (up to 20Mbps) and VDSL2 modem. The reason for this is because you never know when having the ability to go back to an older broadband connection might be necessary. The FTTC service is still being rolled out (covers over 90% of the UK), so it’s not yet universally available like standard ADSL technologies.

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