Friends and family struggling to hear you on a video call, or can’t stream the season finale of your new favourite binge-watch without minutes of buffering? It might surprise you to learn these issues might not be caused by a slow broadband connection. Unless you have miles and miles of ethernet cables snaking around the house, chances are, you’re relying on Wi-Fi to bring those broadband speeds to all of your devices. If you’re powering all of your gadgets with the router sent out for free by your internet supplier, tucked in the back of the cupboard under the stairs, it’s no wonder there are Wi-Fi blackholes resulting in sluggish speeds. That is exactly what BT’s clever Whole Home system wants to solve.
Whole Home is a mesh Wi-Fi system, like you’ll get from a Google Nest Wi-Fi or Amazon Eero range. These systems rely on multiple nodes around the home, which each broadcast and boost the strength of your Wi-Fi signal. As you move around your home, your gadgets will be bounced between the nodes so they’re always connected to the strongest possible signal. If you have dozens of devices, these will be distributed evenly across the nodes, rather than clogging up a single Wi-Fi router.
While the Whole Home system has been designed and built by the clever teams at BT, you won’t need to have a BT broadband connection to use it. You’ll be able to plug-in these nodes around your home no matter who supplies your supplier, including Virgin Media, Sky or TalkTalk. Even if you currently do use BT for your connection, it means you won’t need to switch
BT promises that its Whole Home system will ensure that “even with multiple devices connected you won’t lose speed anywhere in your home”.
Usually priced at £129.99 for a four-pack, BT has dropped the price down to £99.99 as part of its Black Friday sales. That’s a pretty good saving, but it gets even better. BT will throw in a free £20 voucher to spend at Costa Coffee, Go Ape, M&S or Deliveroo for anyone who decides to upgrade their Wi-Fi with this mesh system.
If you’re not bothered about the voucher and want to save as much money as possible, Currys has the same BT Mini Whole Home Wi-Fi bundle available for £94.99 – a £35 saving, compared to the £30 available from BT. Although, you will not get £20 to splash out on a takeaway from Deliveroo.
Of course, it goes without saying that if you’re still struggling to connect to video calls, stream boxsets, and more around your house and you do have a full Wi-Fi signal on all of your devices, then it might be time to look at upgrading the broadband speeds coming into your house. After all, if the Wi-Fi is beaming the internet to your devices, it might simply be that the bandwidth available is being spread thin amongst everyone in the house – or the demands you’re placing on your current speeds. Fortunately, with Black Friday around the corner, there’s never been a better time to upgrade to a new plan…
www.express.co.uk
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