topic Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus in Broadband & Landline

Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

ClaireC4234 — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 09:40:34 GMT

Initially had BT hub but during transition to EE they asked if I’d like a Smart Hub Plus. No extra charge, faster broadband so I said why not! Big mistake

New hub worked for about ten days perfectly fine, then on 25th March everything gradually stopped connecting, starting with Samsung smart TV, then Alexas, Nest camera and iPads.
Open Reach engineer came and tested speeds - his laptop showed 930Mbps (Ethernet cable to router), and his mobile showed 68Mbps (wi-fi). He looked into it but was miffed and had never seen problem before. So he installed new hub which EE had sent, and initially it worked fine, even faster broadband speed than last one. Set up tv, Alexa, Nest etc and all worked for about an hour then stopped working again. Spoke to engineer again and he suggested it may be issue with automatic software updates. So I contacted EE, ordered another hub and got any further updates on this new hub stopped (not ideal but if it worked….)

Whilst waiting for new hub to arrive I spoke to an EE technician. Lovely lad, was on for over two hours, tried everything he could possibly think of, even got me to go on hub manager and talk him through it. No obvious problem and he was unable to fix it.
So third hub arrived 11th April and I installed it. Worked long enough to connect TV and a few Alexas then same problem again. Someone suggested it may be one of my devices creating a problem so we made sure all apps were updated and every iPad and iPhone had up to date software. We originally had over 20 items connected to Wi-Fi (which with BT hub was fine) but we removed everything except the nest camera and my iPhone. Nest camera seems to work most of the time but does occasionally drop out. iPhone still unable to access apps like Netflix and Prime video and safari is patchy at best

If I go on 4G everything works fine. I took phone and iPad to my mum’s house, used her Wi-Fi and everything worked fine (she has BT hub). So at present only way to access tv and iPads etc at home is to use my iPhone as a hotspot

So to sum it up we have super fast broadband to the hub, but not able to access it as somehow it’s not transmitting wifi to the house. Out of the 20 + items, only the Nest camera seems to connect more often than not, and even that drops out now and again (never did that with BT hub). I tried setting up one of the Smart Wi-Fi Plus extenders but that didn’t help. I even tried leaving it connected to hub but still no difference

On hub manager there are 2.4GHz and 5 GHz channels. It only seems to be the Nest camera that uses 2.4GHz, some devices are using wireless 5Ghz, and others are using wireless wi-fi extender

Please, please someone help, I’m at my wits end 🙏

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

Northerner — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 10:45:56 GMT

Hi @ClaireC4234

This sounds very odd.

Can you download a wifi analysing app from the apple store and check your wifi signal in the rooms you are having issues. Are there any conflicting channels or is the signal weak.

These new routers use WIFI 6 which is an improvement over WIFI 5 but you can encounter issues if your devices do not connect to WIFI 6. Also there maybe a block or signal issue hence the analysing tool will help.

Thanks

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

ClaireC4234 — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 11:21:39 GMT

Downloaded the Airport Utility app, and got this scan from using iPad on my hub. Does this mean anything?

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

ClaireC4234 — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 11:24:04 GMT

Sent reply to you I think (I’m a newbie to this please excuse me! )

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

ClaireC4234 — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 11:33:49 GMT

Silly question but I’ve downloaded the WiFi Annalyzer app onto my iPad, but when I go to run a speed test it won’t work because I’ve got no internet to my iPad! Surely if I use my phone as a hotspot to make my iPad work, it will just speed test my 4G?

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

XRaySpeX — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 11:37:30 GMT

That's right, just the speed of the mobile network.

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

Adavis1 — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 06:30:26 GMT

I’m having exactly the same problem. I had an engineer out last week who told me that the WiFi 6 is a problem and he was going to order me an older hub with WiFi 5. This is supposed to be arriving today. I’m hoping this may fix the problem even though it doesn’t make sense to me ??

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

ClaireC4234 — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 09:21:41 GMT

I had the same idea and suggested it when I spoke to EE but they said that shouldn’t be the issue as the new hub is WiFi 6 but is also WiFi 5 compatible (or words to that effect). I have a tech expert coming out tomorrow who may be able to shine a light on the problem. Please let me know if your ‘old style’ new hub solves the problem!

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

Adavis1 — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 16:09:49 GMT

Well… they sent me the same router 3 again and still same issues. I spent over an hour on the phone again to an EE Expert with the conclusion being that I should see how it goes this evening and she’ll call me in the morning. Again, after 10 mins all stopped working.

So frustrating.

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

Adavis1 — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:06:25 GMT

So I’ve had another long conversation with two different people at EE. First one told me they would send an engineer. Second one said no point i just need the older router and he was going to try and get his manager to send me one. No clue what next!?

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

Bovman99 — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 21:20:16 GMT

So I had exactly these problems too after moving from BT and recently receiving a new EE smart hub plus and extender disks. My wifi kept dropping out and would refuse to connect for periods. My solution which solved it all was to go into the hub manager via the IP address and in the wifi settings where it gives info on 2m4ghz, 5ghz etc at the very bottom it has Wifi 6 selected by default. Downgrade this to wifi 5 and everything settled out immediately and no issues since (you don't need the older router as you can downgrade to wifi 5 in the hub manager options!). My house is quite large with very thick walls so I think either the wifi6 was very flaky or most devices weren't handling jumping bands. Anyway, hope this helps as totally solved my problems (without any help from EE)

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

ClaireC4234 — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 10:41:21 GMT

Thanks for the advice but that didn’t help for me, I already tried that! I tried changing from WiFi 6 to WiFi 5, and also from WiFi 6 performance to WiFi 6 compatibility. I also tried port clamping off>on, turning of 5GHz, rescanning channels…..nothing worked. When a tech expert came out he was unable to help and had never seen anything like it (so that is Open Reach and tech expert baffled). However interestingly he had a BT hub in his van (smart hub 2, the one I had before) and when he plugged that in everything worked perfectly. Annoyingly he couldn’t let me have it, as I have moved from BT to EE so can’t go back to old hub 😡. Problem has been escalated, we shall see what happens….

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

-SRB- — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 12:00:33 GMT

If you have returned your old BT hub, you could always get another one on that well known auction site and use it instead of the EE hub.

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

allyjaay — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 07:48:40 GMT

Also going through the same dilemma at the moment, on the 2nd hub now still same issues devices not connect to WiFi and WiFi is fast in testing but slow in use, cameras and TVs are unable to connect etc etc....

Glad it's not just me as they make you feel like your the problem! EE guides on the phone don't seem to understand when I say I had absolutely no problems with the same devices with the old hub!

I'm fairly tech savvy even the Mrs comments on how bad it's been and that's saying something!

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

ClaireC4234 — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 09:58:32 GMT

Finally solved the problem!! After over a month of no WiFi, countless hours on the phone, visits from both Open Reach and tech experts….how was the problem solved - getting a BT hub back 🙄

When the tech expert came out he tried everything to solve the problem. He happened to have a BT hub in the van, and out of interest set it up. It worked perfectly and I was so relieved but he said as I was now EE he couldn’t leave it with me. I had to fight for it, but eventually after speaking to a lovely man called Tom I’ve now got a BT hub back.

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

ISW — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 07:24:44 GMT

Not surprised at all. I was just ‘upgraded’ to the new ee ‘super hub’. First one they sent was faulty. The round wifi extender discs are NOT compatible with it (you get conflicting information from ee staff and engineers on this). Now have one new square one which does pair but the signal is still rubbish (have to wait to order the rest separately despite already having 3 old discs.. Hub is definitely no better than the old one - ‘has a range of 500 metres’ I was told. Even the open reach engineer said ‘maybe if it sat in the middle of a field’….. maximum speed when it does work is 10mb. Happy days - not.

Re: Broadband but no wi-fi with EE Smart Hub Plus

Ewan15 — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 11:01:40 GMT

There are two versions of the EE Smart Hub

EE Smart Hub - This will work with BT Black discs as it is just another version of the BT Smart Hub 2

EE Smart Hub Plus - This has WIFI 6 and therefore requires the Smart WIFI Plus extender model - SW30A

I recently moved over to EE and having read all the bad reviews about the Smart Hub Plus initially stayed with my BT SH2 router.

However out of curiosity I decided to try it out and was pleasantly surprised. I found it to have better range than the SH2 and the WIFI speed I get on my Pixel 6 phone is around 850mbps as opposed to around 500mbps with the SH2.

I have since sourced a SW30A off a well know action site as I wanted to improve the speed to my patio (I used to use a BT Black disk for this purpose) On the patio I get around 500mbps to my phone now compared to 300mbps using the BT Disc.

So overall I am very impressed.😉