ISP BT Launch UK Business Smart Hub 3 Router and Complete Wi-Fi Plus
Broadband ISP BT Business has today announced the launch of their new Wi-Fi 6 capable Smart Hub 3 (SH3.1) router and WiFi mesh extender system (Complete Wi-Fi Plus) for small business customers, which follows last month’s soft launch of similar kit for customers of their EE consumer division (here).
The official announcement is very vague and also makes some confusing claims, such as by stating that the new “Smart Hub 3 Wi-Fi speeds are up to twice as fast as existing BT small business offerings” and then stating that the “router increases wireless speeds up to 900Mbps“.
However, a peak WiFi speed of 900Mbps would actually make the SH3 quite a bit slower than what the prior Smart Hub 2 could achieve (here), which leads us to suspect that they’ve confused the average download rate of their top FTTP broadband package with WiFi performance.
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Otherwise, the announcement mentions that the new router enables businesses to connect over 100 devices through improved network stability and reliability. The new router is also being supported by their latest mesh WiFi system – Complete Wi-Fi Plus, which aims to guarantee the customer Wi-Fi in every room, or they can claim their money back.
Furthermore, on “Enhanced” plans, this will also all be backed up by their Hybrid Connect kit, which guarantees 4G back-up in the unlikely event that your fixed broadband and Wi-Fi connections are interrupted.
Chris Sims, BT’s Managing Director for Small and Medium Business, said:
“For growing businesses with a vast number of connected devices across multiple rooms, reliable connectivity is now business critical. We’re committed to supporting customers with the speedy, dependable networks they need, for the best value.
Our best ever Smart Hub 3 router and new mesh system will continue to future proof our business customers, with faster Wi-Fi speeds and reliable connectivity so they can worry less about their broadband and focus more on what they do best.”
The Smart Hub 3 router now comes as standard on all new Full Fibre business plans, or when customers take out the Complete Wi-Fi Plus add-on service. No pictures or specifications were included with the announcement, but we assume the details will be very similar to the Smart Hub Plus router that EE recently launched, even if the design is a little different.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Interesting part of this is the smart hub 3 has four 2.5gbe ports, so thats a good thing compared to their EE launch a few weeks ago.
It has one 2.5gbps WAN port and four 1gbps LAN ports
Actually i just checked again. It has four 2.5gbe ports according to BT business website. Its the BT Smart Hub 3, not that EE thing that was announced a few weeks ago.
Surely that is a mistake
Why would it be a mistake? A 5 port 2.5gbe switch isnt that much in money terms any more. Its a natural upgrade, especially when BT are about to go multi-gigabit.
When can Joe Public get them ?
Wifi 6, it feels outdated on the day of its release. I have just bought a Wifi 7 router this week from Xiaomi.
And have you got any equipment that will use it?
Too many providers are chucking routers at users, so much waste,p the same with mobile phones and yet most of the people don’t use the features that are in their old router/mobile phone. It is new, we must have it even if we don’t use the features.
WiFi 7 isn’t actually a ratified standard yet. Anything claiming to be WiFi 7 isn’t certified, it’s trust the manufacturer building something they think will meet the specs.
WiFi 6E would be the best any sensible company guaranteeing performance and compatibility would/could offer, but realistically in an office environment and for a typical workplace, that probably doesn’t even have 6E cards in their laptops, the benefit of 6GHz is going to be so negligible as to be not worth the significant extra money it would cost.
@AndyK, my Mac has Wi-fi 6E, my router is Wi-fi6, but I doubt very much if it would make any difference if I got a router with Wifi6e. I do use ethernet, but I did try the Wi-fi to see how well it worked, I got about 400Mb/s according to a broadband speed test, with Ethernet I get around 540Mb/s I pay for 500Mb/s. With my mobile phone I may get 100Mb/s, if I am lucky depending on where I am in the house, plenty fast enough.
I used a old Tplink for a while that had 2.4Ghz Wifi and that worked fine, but sadly it can’t handle all the devices I have now on Wi-fi, whihc is why I got another route. I doubt it would cope with Fibre.
but i do know people who still have old routers, and they still work fine, just because a new standard comes out don’t mean it is needed right away. As you said Wi-fi7 is not a standard yet, could be a shock if it was blocked 🙂
I have just ordered Talktalk Business broadband on the full fibre 500, I’m getting nervous as haven’t been away from the BT ecosystem before.
I’m tempted to cancel and order with BT business after reading this although it would start off £10 a month more than Talktalk Business are charging before VAT.
I had BT business years ago and it was the best connection i ever had until full fibre came along. If you get Talktalk with an older router you wont be able to take the new 1.8gbit connection about to come out on BT (unless you upgrade your equipment). This home hub 3 will be futureproof now for several years(or at least it should be).
TalkTalk business is better. Their offer their connection over IPoE. BT offer it over the very old and inferior PPPoE. You can use much lower spec routers with IPoE.
Apparently, according to Huawei, “In terms of security, point-to-point encapsulation and transmission in PPPoE provide high security for user access and authentication. In contrast, IPoE requires collaboration among the home gateway, network access device, and broadband network gateway.”
IPoE vs PPPoE is a largely meaningless argument these days – and in some respects it still has advantages (it’s trivial to detect connection loss, compared to IPoE where you need to ping or make connection attempts).
Any well made router can handle PPPoE with ease, including BT’s own device which will give you the advertised performance. If your router can’t do this, I’d question why you’d want to use it in the first place.
TalkTalk Business uses PPPoE, it’s only their consumer side that’s IPoE.
Some of their Wifi 6 claims are pretty wrong. I have a Netgear Nighthawk Wifi 6E router. It is a huge upgrade in wireless speeds compared to the BT Wifi 5 routers.
Realistically I get wireless speeds of around 500Mbps on Wifi 6E, nowhere near 900. Also supporting 100 devices seems like an exaggerated figure. My Netgear advertises supporting 60 devices.
Wi-Fi 6 is supposed to offer speeds of up to 2402 Mbps, notice the up to, I doubt that will happen unless you are next door to the router. I don’t know how many devices, but my TPlink router with Wi-fi 6 is supporting all the Wi-fi devices i have and I have a fair few
But does it fit through the letter box?
hahahahahahaha
Just got my new business hub 3. It wont fit in a letter box comes in a bigger box then previous plus router is much taller then sh2.
Speed wise if your closer to router its like 950 speed on wifi futher away holds speeds of 650-800 speed