Full Fibre UK ISP Hyperoptic Launch Home Mesh WiFi Service UPDATE

City-focused full fibre (FTTB/P) broadband ISP Hyperoptic, which is present in parts of 57 UK towns and cities, has today launched a new mesh WiFi service called ‘Total Wi-Fi’, which aims to give new and existing customers the “ultimate [Wi-Fi] speed, reliability, and coverage – in every room.” But it will cost extra.

The provider, which is being backed by global investment firm KKR, has already covered 750,000 premises across the United Kingdom (mostly in large residential buildings / MDUs and some new build houses), and they aim to reach 2 million homes by the end of 2023.

Customers of the service typically pay from £25 per month for their unlimited 50Mbps (5Mbps) upload package on a 24-month contract term (currently discounted to £20), which rises to £60 per month for their top symmetric speed 900Mbps plan with free activation (currently discounted to £40 with 3 months of free service). You also get an included router, although their slowest packages will still attract a £29 one-off activation fee.

The good news is that Hyperoptic has now added a new mesh WiFi service as an optional add-on for their customers, which is called Total Wi-Fi. Mesh networks are designed to extend the coverage and performance of WiFi across a property by using signal repeaters (‘Minihubs‘) – in this case from Nokia and ZTE (specific model numbers weren’t supplied), which connect back to the provider’s existing Hyperhub routers.

Total Wi-Fi will initially be available for new and existing Hyperoptic customers for just £5 a month, until 31 March 2022. It will then be available for £7 a month. One Hyperoptic MiniHub is normally enough, claims the ISP, to enable “coverage across the whole home, but another device can be added if required.”

Charles Davies, MD of Hyperoptic, said:

“With our full fibre broadband, our customers know that they can always rely on us to deliver a hyperfast, reliable service. However, we know that many homes struggle with Wi-Fi ‘black spots,’ which can cause huge frustration. Our new Total Wi-Fi service extends the power of our hyperfast fibre broadband throughout the whole home, so that our customers can work, play, stream or chat wirelessly, wherever they want.”

Sadly, the ISP did not provide any useful technical details on the new Minihubs, such as whether they support the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard (802.11ax). But we have asked and hope to have an answer to that question shortly. However, the Nokia unit pictured is almost certain to be either the slower Nokia WiFi Beacon 1.1 device or the fastest Nokia WiFi Beacon 6 (hopefully it’s the latter).

You could of course just buy your own Mesh WiFi solution independently, which is what a lot of people do, although you wouldn’t then be able to benefit from the provider’s support.

UPDATE 11:54am

We’ve just been given a picture of the other Minihub, which we assume must be the ZTE model because it looks nothing like the Nokia unit. We’re told this supports dual-band concurrent Wi-Fi 6 up to 1800Mbps.