TalkTalk BT claims better Wi-Fi coverage

UK internet service provider BT has claimed its routers provide better Wi-Fi coverage than rivals TalkTalk, EE, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband and Plusnet. Testing took place in BT's multi-storey test home, 800m from any other house, with four separate rooms over three floors. The results table showed BT's Smart Hubs 1 and 2 came out on top, although TalkTalk's hub was a close second. However, the analysis only examined data transfer performance over the 2.4 GHz band and did not include latency data or testing of 5 GHz.

Wednesday, Nov 28th, 2018 (12:01 am) - Score 23,239

BT has complemented the launch of their new Smart Hub 2 router (here) by publishing an updated study of WiFi speedtests, which pitted their kit against routers from TalkTalk, EE, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband and Plusnet. Unsurprisingly the UK ISP claims to provid “better wi-fi coverage” than all of them.

Apparently the testing, which only examined data transfer performance of the wireless local area network (latency etc. wasn’t considered), was based on the IEEE802.11T WLAN Test Methods. But BT’s claim of offering “better wi-fi coverage” is said to only reflect the 2.4GHz band (not 5GHz) “because this gives the best coverage.”

The testing itself was conducted in BT’s special WiFi test house, which has several floors and is situated in a remote rural test facility some 800 metres from any other buildings. Room A is right next to the router, while room B was a little further away on the same level, room C was one floor up and room D was two floors up at the edge of coverage for 2.4GHz (see picture – top left).

NOTE: The limits of 5GHz meant that only Room A and B were tested for that.

The same setup and testing method (involving “hundreds of data points“) was adopted for each router using “normal customer activities.” Overall BT’s Smart Hub 2 and their original Smart Hub 1 broadly topped the results table, although TalkTalk’s new Wi-Fi Hub came pleasingly close.

The testing also included EE’s Smart Hub (re-branded BT Smart Hub), Plusnet’s Hub One (re-branded and tweaked BT Home Hub 5A), Virgin Media’s SuperHub v3 + v2AC and Sky Broadband’s Sky Q Hub. The full report (PDF) also includes upload speeds, although to save space we’ve only published the download scores below.

As usual we’d always recommend taking such results with a pinch of salt because they have not come from an independent source, although BT’s testing does seem to have been reasonably fair. One interesting observation, which was alluded to in the router specs, is that the new Smart Hub 2 does not appear to differ much from the Smart Hub 1 in terms of WiFi performance.