topic Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub in Broadband & Landline

6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

hartjm — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 17:25:06 GMT

Hi,

After coming back from holiday I saw that my router had been updated (giveaway was the option for the beta GUI on the web console).

The update seems to have completely broken the usage of the 6Ghz band. When ever one of the 2 laptops or 2 google pixel phones in the house connect on the 6Ghz band the connection gets rate limited to between 1 and 2 Mbps. Turn off the 6Ghz band and all works as it should on 5Ghz (albeit slower).

I run a split WPA2 2.4Ghz compatibility network and a 5/6Ghz turbo using WPA3 strict. Everything was fine a couple of weeks ago for many many months. I factory reset the hub and recreated the 2 networks as well as trying just a single one and nothing I do can get devices that try and connect to 6Ghz to work anymore. Before my holiday my main laptop with the latest WiFi 6E drivers connected having at 1.2Gbps on the 6Ghz channel - now unusable. My only solution was to turn off 6Ghz. Gemini offered some insight. I had already turned off randomised mac address allocation on all devices which I did when I got the router some months ago as that definitely seemed to play badly with 6Ghz

Anyone else getting this issue? Will raise with EE, has anyone else? Happy to share further details!

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

JimM11 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 17:39:51 GMT

@hartjm You need to take it all up with EE CS, at least you have been and done the Factory Reset so they should see that when they look, good luck with it all.😶👍

You may wish to look at your 5Ghz band on the phone, it should easily touch those speeds as well...

What wifi 5 can do so no way your device cannot do it.

Re: Anyone actually getting anywhere near 900MB? - Page 3 - The EE Community

You may wish to turn your Main 2.4Ghz back on, that will at least prove what your Pro hub is doing.

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

bobpullen — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:51:09 GMT

@hartjm - if things are left using the default configuration (i.e. not using strict WPA3) is it any different? Am I understanding it right that you have the 2.4GHz main WiFi disabled?

I have several 6GHz devices (including Pixels) and they can connect to the 6GHz network with decent speed but that's with a combined 2.4GHz/5GHz/6GHz network as it's configured out of the box.

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

Ian__H — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 13:30:15 GMT

I have the same setup - 2.4 disabled on Main Wifi, although my Main Wifi has WPA3/Transition on 5Ghz and WPA3 on 6Ghz

My laptop connects on Main with 6Ghz and speeds are as before - all normal.

I have the new firmware with Beta UI offered - not selected.

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

JimM11 — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 13:37:45 GMT

@Ian__H You have not done anything at all since the straight FW update was applied to the EE Hub latest version that would be useful to know also?

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

Ian__H — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 15:18:02 GMT

No other changes made. Just restarted hub and extenders.

One observation - one of my pro extenders has become "invisible" to management UI on phone and on browser.

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

JimM11 — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 15:44:47 GMT

@Ian__H Are you a two or three Extender user with your Pro Hub, and all wireless connected or mixed wireless/ethernet. The unit that has disappeared from view wonder if it managed to FW update?

Apart from that is it working as far as you can see?

Lot's off user's are just now so mobile orientated for everything, still old school and manage devices with either PC/Laptop wired or wireless.

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

Ian__H — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 17:09:56 GMT

I have 2 extenders - one is wired with powerline ethernet in garage and the other is wireless upstairs. The upstairs does not show in device manager - but devices are connecting to it OK and the extender is obviously in the mesh fine.

The devices show up as being connected to the hub - but they are connected to my wifi extender for sure.

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

hartjm — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:18:18 GMT

Hi @JimM11 ,

You are of course right that 5GHz bands can touch those speeds I just found that I get the best speeds via 6Ghz and my main laptop that sits upstairs directly above the router gets up to 1.2G on 6Ghz vis around max of 800M on 5Ghz.

Could you explain what benefit from a diagnostic perspective I would gain from turning 2.4Ghz band on my main wifi vs leaving it on just for my compatibility?

Thanks

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

JimM11 — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:24:23 GMT

@hartjm The main issue is what has happened with the FW update that EE has applied to the EE Smart Hub 7 Pro that you have and you having to disable the 6Ghz band for operation, with the Hub in a standard mode with all the bands in operation was it more off a MLO and because one off the bands ie your 2.4Ghz on the main switched off did it throw a wobble and mess with your 6Ghz band operation. Understand what you are trying to do, have zero issues with that and you should contact EE CS, they will NO DOUBT ask or insist that you do a Factory reset (the get out off jail) but you just need to make the decision with that, for sure a Factory reset will turn it back on and into operation again.

Was there ANY outcome from speaking to EE CS from the start of your thread? Did you also see the reply from @bobpullen as to his 7 Pro hub but the only difference is his 2.4 band is on, has been updated as he also has the beta GUI and not seeing your specific 6Ghz connect issue?

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

hartjm — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:08:47 GMT

Hi @bobpullen

So first up I don't use the extender that came with the pro as I don't need it for the layout of my house.

So out of the box on day one of getting the router a couple of months ago I tried using the default configuration with one single SSID 2.4Ghz/5Ghz/6Ghz WPA3-Transition. I immediately ran into intermittent issues with my 2 windows 11 laptops whereby if they connected on the 5Ghz frequency I got excellent throughput 900mb to 1.2Gb but when they reconnected at 6Ghz I got speeds of between 2 and 10mb only and experience drops. I experienced similar problems with my Pixel 7a phone.

I'm an IT professional but not a network specialist and worked through with gemini a diagnosis. As the speeds were so slow I split the network in 2 that so I could easily get on to the router admin console on the compatibility network and make changes and test them. The split was as follows:

Turbo (aka Main): 5 GHz and 6Ghz WPA3 transitional
Compatibility: 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WPA2

This allowed me good speeds on the compatibility SSID and so I could further diagnose and configure the router.

At the suggestion of gemini I made the following changes:

Pixel7a: Switched the phone to connect to the Turbo network using a non-randomised MAC address

Laptop 1 (MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E MT7922 (RZ616) 160MHz Wireless LAN Card) and
Laptop 2 (Intel WiFi 6E Wireless Card Intel AX210NGW):
a) Switched to non-randomised MAC addresses
b) Updated to latest WHQL drivers from Microsoft CAB and via Intel tool for 1 and 2 respectively

This improved things considerably for the laptops, but the Pixel 7a still struggled sometimes.

I then switched the Turbo network over to WPA3 Strict and all 3 devices behaved well, no drops and fast speeds across the 5Ghz and 6Ghz frequencies. I set my devices to only connect to the Turbo network leaving older devices e.g. Alexa etc to use the compatibility network.

Things remained completely stable for months until the latest firmware update (which happened whilst away on holiday) whereby I again experienced slow speeds of between 2 and 10mb when devices connected at 6Ghz onto the turbo network.

Here is what I did next:

1. I rebooted the router and deleted all network connections on the 3 devices and reconnected but the issue persisted.
2. I reset to factory settings the router back to a single network and tried connecting to that but still had the 6Ghz only issue.
3. I recreated the 2 networks as above with WPA3 Strict and WPA2 for turbo and compatibility respectively. Again after clearing the network connections recreating them still resulted in 6Ghz problems.

At this point I then dropped the 6Ghz completely so that the turbo network only supported 5Ghz and everything worked again as it should. Speeds at 5Ghz are not as high as 6Ghz but experience no drops and good throughput.

Anything else I should try?

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

hartjm — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:13:03 GMT

Hi @JimM11

I haven't had the opportunity to contact EE CS yet - if you see the thread reply to @bobpullen above you can see all the steps I took when first getting the router and then after the firmware update (including doing a factory reset).

Happy to try a few other config changes out of hours over the weekend including adding the 2.4Ghz band onto my main turbo network.

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

JimM11 — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:31:09 GMT

@hartjm Did read your reply, and what you did was really all fine and dandy so to speak, making changes and testing is like pin the tail on a donkey with a triple blindfold to say the least, only two suggestions i would make, wifi analyse the signals, do the 6Ghz only on all the rest off on your main and try connecting the devices, they have NO choice as only the one band on, the other is currently getting reported that CH100 and that is a 5Ghz band not the 6 is highly unstable and kicking devices off the network, EE have had an OP report and they dialled in fixed the CH to 36 so he can see if the network remains stable on the 5Ghz band, that has only been a few day's so far and nothing posted up result's wise....

Until you take a look at the bands get's real hard to say, but if you do then NOTE them all Mac addresses and hidden bands to boot plus the EE WiFi that is FREE..... I would be calling EE CS, the Tech team may be fully aware and then if so you are just wasting your time, do NOT use any EE Equipment, no longer an EE Customer, and i am a Network Engineer but one off the old school ones.

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

bobpullen — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:14:48 GMT

@hartjm wrote:
So out of the box on day one of getting the router a couple of months ago I tried using the default configuration with one single SSID 2.4Ghz/5Ghz/6Ghz WPA3-Transition. I immediately ran into intermittent issues with my 2 windows 11 laptops whereby if they connected on the 5Ghz frequency I got excellent throughput 900mb to 1.2Gb but when they reconnected at 6Ghz I got speeds of between 2 and 10mb only and experience drops. I experienced similar problems with my Pixel 7a phone...

So, you had some sort of problem with the default settings even prior to update?

Switching from WPA3-PTM > WPA3 should have zero bearing on speeds as it mostly concerns the initial handshake when your devices associate with the WiFi. From that point onwards, all should be well as long as the connection is successfully established (and stays so).

Some devices do struggle with 'mixed mode' WPA3 and that's what Compatible WiFi is for. I would not expect it for any of the devices you've listed though. Whilst not identical, one of my laptops has an AX211 card (same family) and that's perfectly fine with the combined 2.4GHz/5GHz/6GHz network.

The next thing I would be looking to establish what the affected client devices think they're doing when connected to 6GHz e.g. the Pixel will tell you the signal strength, frequency, security, standard, and transmit and receive speeds if you look in the Andorid WiFi connection properties. Similar attributes can be seen in Windows connection properties. It would be interesting to see what these things are reporting when you're suffering problems.

Doesn't apply to the Windows devices but various Pixels have not been without their WiFi nuances over the years.

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

hartjm — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 07:21:30 GMT

So @JimM11

I had a productive conversation with EE CS on Saturday and explained all the above. They dispatched me a replacement router which arrived Tuesday lunchtime which I switched over immediately too. Note the initial firmware was pre the August UI update.

Out of the box everything worked with the default settings in place and the 5 devices I have that support 6Hz bands: A pair of Pixel phones (11/8a), my 2 laptops with different WiFi 6E cards and my new 4K Fire TV 4K Stick Max all confirmed working fine. I got both laptops and the Pixel phones to also connect on 5GHz when moved slightly further away and would happily switch between 5 and 6Ghz.

About 5 hours later I lost the internet temporarily which I confirmed as an OTA update to the new firmware with the new UI. Everthing fine and dandy afterwards.

I came back from work yesterday evening and everything worked fine for about 30 minutes and then bam 6Ghz band devices just couldn't get out the internet depsite a strong signal. I rebooted the router from the management console via direct ethernet connection (5Gz and 2.4Ghz devices were unaffected also) and 6Ghz behaved normally again. About 30 minutes later same thing happened 6Ghz could not see the internet / no data as I was watching Champions League on the Fire TV Stick.

I went back on to the management console and turned off 6Ghz and those affected devices reconnected onto 5Ghz and had no issues for the rest of the evening and into this morning.

I'll report my findings back to EE CS this morning hopefully as I am again at home. Very frustrating!

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

hartjm — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:38:35 GMT

Further to the above having tested the 2nd router again after a factory reset the issue still persists. I contacted EE CS who will investigate further and see if they can diagnose a fault with the firmware and remediate.

All I can do at the moment is keep the 6GHz off and try again the next time the firmware updates and if needed rinse and repeat!

Re: 6Ghz band broken after latest firmware update Pro7 hub

JimM11 — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:50:31 GMT

@hartjm You hit the nail smack bang in the middle, EE FW bod's are having somewhat off a rocky time at present, then again they cannot cover every eventuality to the nth degree, and oops do creep in and upset the apple cart. Hang fast and see what CS can come up with for you, real pity downgrade backwards is just not an option from them. At least your 5Ghz is keeping you connected and reasonable speeds currently.