@jasonpartington Yea the way I think of it is all-in-all is these EE routers are selling on line for about £50. So it's not mega-money lost - and if you already have a different router in the house (which we all do) it'd not really that big a deal as the other router just works *immediately, completely*.
Out of general principle I'd have liked to use the new shiny kit. But when I plugged in my old router everything felt so much better, more responsive, immediate, no problems whatsoever.
Plus all I do is wait for 3+ people to start writing on this thread 'Holy moly, that patch last night, I think it's solved it you know' and I'm back on the new kit again anyway.
If the problem was on the ISP-end (rather than on the hardware in my house) I'd have been TOTALLY GUTTED as I'm tied in for 2 years. However as I can get flawless internet through EE just by flipping in a different router in about 4 minutes .. ach, it's hard to get mega-upset.
I think they offer the new router because the discount they must get for buying in 150,000, or 300,000 of them must be insane (like, I bet they're paying £20 per unit or something) - and their marketing guys are saying 'People want a new toy through the post, it gets the sales, acts as a 'differentiator' between ISPs, you can invent something called 'Gamers mode' which is another differentiator, so trust us, you gotta give 'em a shiny physical box of tech'.
If they offered without the shiny new router, and it only knocked £2 or something off the monthly price (which I reckon is all it would, as it only cost EE 20 quid or so) - people might start to work out the shiny new box isn't a super-duper fantastic expensive must-have thing anyway.
