Youfibre Preps First Own Brand Router for 7Gbps UK Broadband Plan
Broadband ISP Youfibre, which is one of the retail outlets for Netomnia’s (Brsk) 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, has begun to distribute a new router to customers of their top 2Gbps and 7Gbps (average speed) packages. But unlike the Asus AXE16000 router they shipped before, the new kit is their first own-brand device and more will follow.
Just for some context. Netomnia’s full fibre network currently covers over 2.08 million premises across parts of more than 90 UK cities and towns, but they’re aiming to reach 3 million homes and businesses by the end of 2025. The network is also home to a total of 238,000 customers via Brsk and Youfibre, and they have an ambition to reach 1 million customers by 2028.
The good news today is that Youfibre appear to be starting to distribute their first own brand Wi-Fi 7 (tri-band) routers to customers of their top symmetric speed 2Gbps (1800Mbps) and 7Gbps broadband packages – these normally cost from just £49.99 and £99.99 per month, respectively, on an 18-month minimum contract term with no setup fees.
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After asking the ISP about this we discovered that the new kit, which was first spotted by one of our readers (credits to Dan Jenkins for the picture), appears to be based off Sagemcom‘s high-spec F@ST 5599 model (aka – “Hub Pro“) that features the BCM68572 chip (SoC) from Broadcom. Except the unit’s case has been physically re-modelled and re-branded for Youfibre.
Youfibre Hub Pro Router – Headline Features
2.4GHz Wi-Fi (3×3 Wi-Fi 7 – BCM6711)
5GHz Wi-Fi (4×4 Wi-Fi 7 – BCM6726)
6GHz Wi-Fi (4×4 Wi-Fi 7 – BCM67263)
1 x 10GE WAN Port
1 x 10GE and 4 x 1GE LAN Ports
1 x FXS (Phone / VoIP) Port
1 x USB Port (details unclear)
1GB DDR4 RAM
4GB eMMC Flash
The provider also confirmed to ISPreview that they were preparing a smaller (lower spec and cheaper) variant of this device for their 1Gbps and slower tiers, but this isn’t expected to be ready for a full launch for another 3 months or so. At present only a few of Youfibre’s newest customers are receiving this kit, seemingly as part of a trial, and indeed it doesn’t yet show up on their website.
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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That reminds me of one of Virgin Media’s hubs. Whether recent (or in the past) at least the design. I think they’ve taken from the playstation 5 as well by the looks of things, not that it’s inherently bad or anything just what I noticed.
Specs look pretty impressive, just wonder how customisable it will be, I know some ISPs are restricting customer access to the configuration pages of their routers.
You can get into the admin pages. The admin pages themselves have a simple UI so don’t expect to be doing much but you can at least get in and change wifi details, turn IPv6 off, etc… I haven’t poked around much more than that as I plugged my UDM pro in after some troubleshooting and haven’t been back in.
No, you don’t need a 7Gbps plan – but it’s fun, and good bragging rights. Almost 100x faster than our lowly copper connection, as we wait for the fibre promised for years…
No doubt it’s fun, I’m on 2.3, the fastest that CF will do…. Looks like my next switch and router upgrade is 10G
Currently sporting 1Gbps and 2Gbps from two different providers and can concur that going above 1Gbps is mostly pointless – whilst there are use cases where I can exploit all 3Gbps in load balancing – it is *very* niche and most of the time I can download single threaded off the internet around 400-500Mbps. Fun experiment (and having two services from two different networks is useful for outages given I inhabit a home of remote workers), but honestly, I would be happy with just the 1 x 1Gbps.
Personally, I’d rather the Asus AXE16000 running Merlin’s firmware. Apart from lack of WiFi 7, everything else is better.
These ISP branded routers are bare minimumin terms of what you can set and would be useless for me when I join You fibre. Fortunately I have the GT-BE98 so I’d use that to the ONT. All they need is an option for “No router required” during checkout to reduce environmental wastage.
While hardware doesn’t look bad, they will for sure kill it with sh*t software, stay tuned.
1gbe LAN ports are going to be really useful lol, why not 2.5gbe at least? I guess the 10gbe port means you can uplink to a switch although SFP+ would be better in that case.
You might have all 10gb devices on a switch then use the 1g ports to connect devices with only 1g, games consoles, TVs, raspberry pis and so on
Nearly all the people taking a residential 7Gb service now are likely enthusiasts, so would probably be using their own kit, like a pfSense box or a UDM, I would think.
Don’t like it.
Looks like a games console, I rather a router to look like a router, I can understand them wanting it to fit in with the home, but that certainly don’t. I would rather a black box that can be hidden or at least put somewhere that it cannot be seen easily.
This Wi-Fi 7 that they all seem to be jumping on is useless for many people, i suppose it is future proofing, but by the time it becomes the norm, they will be replacing the router because that what a lot of internet providers seem to do.
I prefer my own router more control, but I do understand that some people just want to turn it on and that is it, but some people struggle with connecting Wi-Fi
I understand that part of the reason for not making them flat black boxes is to deter people from hiding them away and then complaining about the resulting poor WiFi coverage.
@OIMO, that is true, but saying that, that router looks so naff that they may hide it away anyway. They may just stick it under the TV.
Mine is on a shelf behind the sofa, along with my Alexa and so other hubs. I have seen some strange places for routers over the years. on top of Microwaves, freezers, shoved under the stairs, even one in the loft, sure it was a conversion, but then they complained they could not get wi-fi downstairs.
Admittedly most devices will have a 1GE or perhaps a 2.5GE port, shame they decided to stick with 1GE ports. Doesn’t make sense when the speeds are 2GB or higher.
Saying that though, I have 1GB with them and it’s fast enough.
The majority of people will only have devices that have 1GE ports, if they use them at all.
Many devices (like smart TVs) still only have 100Mb ports.
Who the hell needs 7Gb/s? It’s just getting bloody silly lately.
Completely agree with the diminishing gains over 1Gbs, I’m on YouFibre 2Gb and using my own Asus RT-GT98 Pro mesh network which has WiFi link speeds of around 3gbps. Speedtests will get the full speed but without hard wiring everything you’re unlikely to see anything above ~2gbps. I have both a Desktop PC with WiFi 7 and an Iphone 16 pro max, both will uplink to wifi 7 at over 2gbps but nothing even close to 7gbps and the performance on 10GBE network is still lower latency an less jitter compared to WiFi so the WiFi is very much a fallback on the PC.
Many devices are CPU limited when downloading at high speeds, such as my Steamdeck, Xbox, PS5 etc. or are limited to 1gbps networking.