EE Smart Hub (SH31B) - Painful Admin Experience.

[tdaddy78]

I am EE BB and Mobile customer. I am posting my experience with the Smart Hub (SH31B) wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same.

Before moving to EE  (from Sky) I used the Sky Router (had to, for Sky Q to even work properly) with my own Deco Wi-Fi 5 mesh system. As this system is Wi-Fi 6 I was hopeful to switch to it and not have to rely on another piece of kit.

So now I just have the Hub plus WiFi extender.

I have an open ticket for an engineer to come tomorrow, but I expect there will be little the engineer can do about points 1 & 2.. 3 maybe solved by simply swapping the hub out.

Here are my observations.

1. You cannot change the DNS settings, its hardcoded and paired to the DHCP. So if you want to use your own DNS server settings (PiHole) or managed private DNS you cannot, unless you switch off DHCP and manage that in line with DNS... I have checked all settings its simply not there. (This I have seen in Sky and also other routers as a standard advanced config option for many years). In practice this means all your web traffic is hard coded to the EE DNS settings.

2. I have a very fussy Solar Power/Battery system that has an inbuilt modem that can 'only' connect to a Wi-Fi system if its only 2.4G (not mixed 2.4/5/6 on the same network id). There is no way (even with the Guest network how I managed this previously) to set this to only 2.4G so that this fussy little device can connect. (this maybe true for other cheap devices you have at home (smart lamps etc..) that only ever connect via 2.4G). And you cannot separate out your home WIFI into 2.4 and 5G networks. I did read as a work around temporarily disabling the 5G will help.. but this is a pretty poor work around and it should be manageable from the web UI. ( I will be raising this with GivEnergy anyhow as I have issues with this builtin modem and its very poor security anyway, but that's different thing)

3. My Admin Web UI is sluggish. Not my broadband experience (that is fine and very fast) but the Admin UI experience is slow and clunky.. it feels like an issue with the firmware of the hub (memory leak on web app maybe). I was able to improve this by rebooting (after uptime of only 16 days).. so a 4 or 5 seconds response went down to 2 second response time, for any page in the admin UI.. Which for any device on your LAN, is awful, and you should not have to reboot a router after 2 weeks.

As it stands I would not recommend this Hub to anyone, be that novice consumer or more technical person like my self, because of the UX of managing it is painful, and if you were not technical you would be tearing your hair out with this now.

I know this is an EE custom firmware OS, but it lacks many useful standard features.. I would rather not even have it and EE reduce the price of my broadband, I'll buy the kit I need and manage it myself. As it currently has very little value.

I may have to switch this out for my own system, which I was hoping I would not have to do, but confirms what I have always thought that BB provided WiFi routers are cheap and unreliable.. so don't bother with them.

Will also post the outcome from the engineer coming tomorrow. 

[tdaddy78]

If your service of phone or internet is impacted then this warrants escalating and you are eligible for compensation.

Make sure you highlight that the router is impacted your service.

This is not the case for me.. but I don't use the phone service at all.

[LocalWalker]

Agreed.

BT broadband. No problems and great range.

Changes to EE and now have to pay £120 year extra for wifi extenders.

The wifi keeps dropping out.

Broadband is intermittent and slower than with BT.

Phone support was pointless so I raised a complaint.

I dread having to phone EE support. Is should a be so easy for such a basic utility.

[Pm1vNKf]

I was confronted with this bundle of pain last night, older family have had this lot foisted on them as "necessary" after they spotted another twenty-or-so pounds had been slammed onto their monthly BT bill. They'd been assured this was all compatible with their overly priced BT handsets etc. and it is dire.

They were left without phone service as replacing the BT SmartHub2 with this slab meant the handsets weren't registered. Having managed to register one their extensive phonebook had been lost. Thankfully the "old" hub was still there, and after powering on, I exported the Contacts (saves as a vcf), reconfig the PC to the new hub and was then able to import the Contacts.vcf to the new hub, and then register the other four handsets.

Like poor ex-Chief Inspector Dreyfus we then proceeded to blunder forward to be mashed in the face by the next rake. Their house has 3-4ft wide walls and at least three BT mini-disc range extenders, which have been painstakingly positioned (and wired to mains) so the phone handsets will actually work. It appears this hub isn't compatible with the BT mini-discs.

I discovered the EE "helpline" had already closed at 9pm.

After finagling the pernickety port forwarding setup (fixed IP in the local network has to be in the DHCP assigned "range") I finally left thinking I had an ssh tunnel available to mop up today. This morning I realised I hadn't setup DDNS/NoIP, and after managing to extract via a side-channel, I've spent twenty minutes going up and down the chronicly laggy UI, failing to find such a basic setting, searching the internet and landing on this (as one of many threads) slating the hub.

Appreciate I'm posting to a six-month old thread, but all I can observe is that the software revision number has gone up, the model number has been removed from the UI (well I wouldn't want to 'fess up to being one of these, I'd rather self-identify as a talking toaster) and very basic functionality is missing. The project lead wants sacking.

Extra bonus points for forcing the bloated EE app onto a barely smartphone to "setup" the hub, and sending the authentication to the email account which was only accessible on the PC, which needed the hub to be setup in order to......

[JimM11]

@Pm1vNKf Would look to keep all of the BT equipment and wireless extenders etc, they work fine on the EE service.

[XRaySpeX]

@JimM11 : But not with the EE app & its WiFi Controls?

[JimM11]

@XRaySpeX That's correct, reading the OP post, looks like he would not need either.

[Pm1vNKf]

Definitely looking at reverting the hub/extender setup.

To add petrol to an incendiary situation, they had an email yesterday:

"As part of your move to EE, you'll need to return your BT equipment.

Please send the following back to us by 22 Dec 2024 so you won't be charged:

Item Charge
Wi-Fi Disc £30.00
BT TV 4K Recordable Box £115.00..."

If EE want BT stuff back they should inform the customer ahead of sending them replacement stuff (the recordable box happened to still be in my boot ready to be dropped at local recycling centre, after their disgust that I couldn't transfer all the saved series of Bargain Hunt onto the new EE Box).

From a colleague's dire  8 month experience after escaping BT, we will ensure we have a tracking number, and save the delivered receipt - he had to submit a SAR (Art.15 UK GDPR) to have someone with half-a-clue acknowledge BT had received the kit which they were falsely billing him for!