I used to have a Smart Hub (Type A) and a collection of the white discs which came with it. Then I decided to change to Smart Hub 2 and its black disc, but the BT installer told me when he came that the system wouldn’t work in my house because of the thick walls and long distances, and that I should revert to the previous setup. However, I couldn’t do that because I’d got switched to Digital Voice in the meantime and needed the new hub for my landline to work. I kept the new hub, but also kept the white discs. The installer seemed surprised that they appeared to work with the black disc, and indeed they did, but there were, as before, dropouts and suchlike that called for a boost to the signal.
A BT expert said that the best route would be Powerline adaptors, but these only work up to a point – the furthest rooms of the house are on a different electrical circuit. Next advice was to get a wifi range extender, which I did – a TP-Link RE650 – and it certainly did help the signal in the furthest reaches of the house.
But here’s the thing – all of a sudden the network calling itself ‘BTWholeHome-3HN’ now works so fantastically well that it beats the performance of the various extenders and repeaters by a mile – showing 100% on my signal meter as soon as it locks on the the furthest white disc in the most distant room, and all four discs displaying an ‘excellent connection’ on the WholeHome app for the first time ever.
This is great, of course, but I’d love to know what is going on here. The hub’s network is called BT-WGA**5, and yet the WholeHome name pops up as a choice each time. The Powerline devices and the wifi range extender are set to recognise the BT-WGA network, but are they somehow boosting the WholeHome one – and how can they possibly affect the efficiency of the discs themselves?
