Hi,
I am at the end of my wits and tether with Sky and about to jump ship to BT. Here is my layout:
- Main Openreach switch in ground floor office
- Main TV box in ground floor lounge with no easy way to run 10m cable from the office
- Extra TV box in a second ground floor reception room, again with no easy way to run 10m cable from socket/hub
- Summer house at end of 60ft garden
The package I am configuring is:
- Fibre2 with Complete Wifi Guarantee
- Landline (PAYG)
- HD TV main and Extra box
Here is what I want in my new world:
- Wifi throughout both floors incl. all 4 bedrooms (Sky not even close)
- Extra box communicating reliably with main TV box (Sky not even close)
- Wifi in Summer House (currently achieved with Powerline adapter and an old Apple Airport echoing SSID but would be nice to have a single solution)
It's a 1920 house so walls are pretty substantial. I started out looking at a Whole Home Mesh running off the Sky Broadband, but would prefer a single throat to choke(!) and, anyway, Sky Broadband goes down daily.
Here are my questions:
Q1: The BT mini boxes appear to power line adapters, whereas I was favouring Wholehome disks with ethernet cable running from disks into the two TV boxes to give me the best possible chance of reliable TV. I know that Powerlines can fluctuate and may not work depending on how my home is wired. If I just place an order with BT it looks like I will get the black disk (different system to Wholehome) and a choice of either a 10m cable or power lines? I'd rather pay extra for Wholehome setup (several disks) and couple that with BT Fibre - can that be done with BT directly as one transaction or will I end up buying separately and discarding their black disk?
Q2: I would like the reassurance of an engineer installation visit so that I can look into the whites of their eyes and their test meter(!). This is not offered via the online ordering that I can see - do BT offer this?
Q3: I read that I get free handsets for the Landline but this offer never appeared the desktop ordering process. Did I dream this or does the landline package include this?
Q4: Should the Summer House be included in my Complete Wifi guarantee as an outbuilding?
Thanks for you response(s)/experience(s) - I really want the best possible chance of this working correctly because the whole family are going NUTS with the current Sky setup (which is also more expensive than BT).
