ISP BT Expand Complete Wi-Fi to All Superfast Fibre Broadband Plans
At the end of last year BT launched a new “coverage guarantee” for their premium “Plus” packages (here), which pledged to deliver strong WiFi signals across your whole home via a new “Complete Wi-Fi” solution. The UK ISP has now expanded this to new non-Plus customers and thrown in 1 year of Amazon Prime access.
BT’s Complete Wi-Fi service costs an extra £10 per month and aims to “guarantee” you a strong WiFi signal in “every room” of your home by bundling their latest Smart Hub 2 router with a special WiFi boosting Disc (like the repeaters you get via the BT Whole Home Wi-Fi kit). At the time BT claimed that a “four-bedroom home could see an increase in Wi-Fi speeds of up to 25% around the home with just one disc.”
The disc itself remains the property of BT but the Hub becomes yours to keep as soon as you get it. However the guarantee means that if one disc isn’t enough to achieve the stated outcome then BT will throw in another one at no extra cost (up to a maximum of 3 discs) and if that doesn’t deliver coverage to every room then a bill credit of £20 is offered.
Initially only selected premium BT Plus packages could include the Complete Wi-Fi Guarantee (£5 extra per month), but from today it will also now be offered to all new “Superfast Fibre” broadband customers. Of course if you don’t fancy the monthly charge and then you could always get their Whole Home Wi-Fi kit with 3 discs for around £179.99 (or 2 discs for £122).
Please check out the original article for a full specification (here). In addition, BT has launched a special offer on all their “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P or G.fast) products, which gives new customers 12 months of free Amazon Prime access (i.e. cheaper deliveries, access to Prime Video and Music content etc.). Prime’s RRP is usually £79 for the year or £7.99 per month.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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So I guess BT has just doubled the price to £10 and given it a new name. This new service also has less features than the plus service. Not sure giving the Amazon prime can justify the doubled price though.
Seems nothing but an effective customer retention method
BT pricing approach is again confusing. When they introduced Complete WIFi included within the PLUS product it made the enhanced product more compelling to certain customer types. However now offering Complete WIFI for £10 per month more (£5 long term) means that they have lost what could have been a compelling market differentiator for many non tech customers. I liked the Complete product and its set up simplicity.
Charging customers £180 (over 18 month contract) for what is a two point mesh product that retails for £150 (cheaper new year offers disappearing) is ludicrous. These disk units are cheap to BT and the hub probably no more expensive than previous ones.
Most houses only really need a good cabled ceiling WIFI AP to resolve their issues however the BT Whole home WIFI provides a good, non technical and easily controllable (via app) WIFI solution that can be set up in minutes and should last for many years. I recommend turning off the Hub WIFI and cabling to the first mesh disk.
I suspect something else may going on though as a major retailer is showing some Whole Home WIFI products as not available for delivery. Even if a new product is imminent my view is that BT has lost the plot again.
They should focus in expanding speeds then wifi coverage ,but some people are not some techy about technology and will go for it
I’d hazard a guess that a large amout of “speed” and “performance” issues these days are a result of either poor WiFi coverage or RF congestion in and around the customer premieses. You could have a 1Gb connection to your house but if you’re connected on a congested channel or using older 802.11 standards then that isn’t going to help you.
It is mostly marketing twaddle but I would say that your home’s internal network is as important as the connectivity to your house from the ISP and that most residents probably don’t have the knowhow nor interest in either other than that they just want Netflix or Facebook to “work”.
“BT’s Complete Wi-Fi service costs an extra £10 per month”
“The disc itself remains the property of BT”
Is it 1st April already? You can buy wifi booster/extenders for under £20 and own it for life.
WiFi extenders/boosters are generally trash for most applications and often simply add addtional congestion to the already congested RF environment.
They can help in some cases and do sometimes have their uses but as mentioned above, the correct solution is additional cabled APs.
BT nor any other provider have control of the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands so can only attempt to use kit that makes best use of what is available of the medium in their specific deployment. At least with the BT service above they are offering a guarantee of sorts or a credit on your bill which may be of some benefit to the average layman.