ISP BT Set to Trial New Faster Smart Hub 2 Broadband Router

BT’s Consumer Test and Trials team has begun inviting a select few of their UK home broadband subscribers to take part in a new beta trial of their forthcoming “Smart Hub 2” (SH2) wireless router, which is naturally promising to deliver “even better performance and new features“.

The original Smart Hub launched in 2016 and at the time it was quite an impressive piece of kit for a bundled device (here). Since then we’ve also seen a couple of different variations, such as the recent Smart Hub X for their G.fast users (here) and a slightly different model for their “full fibre” FTTP customers.

Historically BT has usually allowed a few months for testing before launch, which means that this one will probably drop sometime during early 2019. At the very least we’d expect it to support the latest 802.11ac Wave 2 WiFi specification like TalkTalk’s new Wi-Fi Hub (here) and they’ll almost certainly be adding full VoIP (phone port) support due to the new SOGEA (standalone broadband) service.

On top of that there’s an outside chance that they might include support for the bleeding edge 802.11ax WiFi standard (10Gbps capable), as well as WPA3 wireless encryption (here), although we’ve heard it won’t (too early for those). The new router is otherwise expected include support for their latest G.fast and FTTP based “ultrafast broadband” packages.

BT like other ISPs has often tried to claim a WiFi performance lead on their rivals, which is at risk after TalkTalk launched the new Wi-Fi Hub and Vodafone announced their impressive Gigafast Broadband Router (here). Meanwhile Sky Broadband will imminently launch a new router to help support their FTTC and future G.fast/FTTP packages and Virgin Media are also gearing up to do the same.

We hope to learn more once the new routers start to be distributed.