BT 500 vs 900 vs EE

[ItsJustMe]

Hi currently on BT fibre 500, contract due to renew. Any benefit upgrading to BT fibre 900 when home is wireless connection. Also would EE be better as they offer WiFi 6 or 7 and prices slightly cheaper?  I also need complete discs or extenders as house is 3 storey.  Work from home and so worried about any loss of service if I can may a switch. Any advice appreciated. 

[Kodikid]

Any point upgrading to 900mbps from 500mbps...none whatsoever 

Is wifi 6/7 better then wifi 5..yes

Do EE offer extenders...yes

Do EE offer Norton anti virus ...yes for a fee wheres it's free on BT

If I was you I'd go with EE

[Colin_London]

I have the same decision to make. I think the answer is probably ‘not with BT’ and that’s because of the limitation of the Smart Hub 2 to WiFi 5 which means you will never get more than about 500Mbps out to your devices.

if you have a wired home network the decision may be different, but to make any use of 900mbps on BT you’d probably also need to invest in better WiFi networking equipment.

[licquorice]

Funny how I get 866Mbs from the BT hub then!!

[Quesada]

@ItsJustMe 

If it aint broken.

I dropped from FF900 + Halo 3 to FF150, without the mini discs and found no difference in service.

You couldn't make it up

[iniltous]

Care to mention a real world situation on a WiFi connected device where the difference between WiFi standards is noticeable, what is it you can do on a tablet , or smart phone where 500Mb becomes a noticeable problem that 700Mb will solve ?

I suspect that there isn’t a single application apart from running a speed test , ( TBH , I think  it’s a little sad if that’s the entire reason to purchase a higher speed package,  just to watch the needle swing around on a speed tester GUI to 700-800Mb instead of ‘sticking’ at 500Mb )

I can’t think of anything else where this limit is a problem.

[gg30340]

@Colin_London 

It may be that your wireless device are not able to use such high speeds. 

I can get high speeds on my mobile devices which are newish but my laptop is limited due to the wireless card that is installed.

 If I use a modern wifi dongle on the laptop instead of the onboard card I get the full speeds I would expect.

In any event without using a speed test I doubt you will notice any difference between 500Mbps and 900Mbps except the price unless you are downloading excessive amounts of data on numerous devices at the same time.

[Colin_London]

My PC is hard wired to a disc which has a very good (blue) signal. So if there is a limitation of WiFi it is the BT disc!

It is a fact that the maximum connection speed on a Smart hub 2 at 5GHz is 866 Mbps. That equates to about 500Mbps throughput (unless you are bridging the two bands). The Smart hub 2 just isn’t good enough to serve up 900Mbps throughput.

[ItsJustMe]

Thanks all for the great responses. Think the answer is to stay with the Fibre 500 : )    Probably need to set up my complete discs a bit better to make the most of the signal.  Have others invested in a better router whilst keeping to the fibre 500 package?

[Kimberlin]

@ItsJustMe 

Not everyone will agree, but invest in a better router. You may as well have a WiFi 6/7 router, tri-band than something which is a 7 year old design which in tech terms, is well past its sell by date. I don’t disagree that for most customers, the now ageing SH2 is perfectly adequate, but the fact is, there is better equipment out there that you can make use of.

As for Norton anti-virus, well if you get it for ‘free’ with BT, so be it, but the price of it is undoubtedly built into BT’s pricing structure. Personally, if you use a Windows PC, I’d just use Microsoft Defender, there’s nothing wrong with it.

I highly suspect that 900mbps is just an over hyped marketing gimmick because the vast majority of customers would probably never actually get much benefit from it. I’ve got over 30 devices connected to my 500mbps full fibre, Wife WFH and we’ve got no problems whatsoever and I use a third party router.