PLUS NET TO EE MIGRATION EXPERIENCE- SMART HUB PLUS PROBLEMS

[OldNumber1]

I was migrated to EE from Plusnet on 25th August 2026.  The Smart Hub Plus arrived a few days beforehand and on the day my Plusnet Hub 2 light was red when I looked at it in the morning, so I changed to the Smart Hub Plus.  Here are some issues:
1) The Smart Hub Plus light went aqua colour as expected but the phone didn't work - message of apology from EE on the line.  I phoned EE on my mobile phone and they advised that the phone line may not migrate until the following day....good job I have a mobile, both for the non-functioning of the phone and to contact EE.  The phone started working about 2 hours after the switchover

2) I could not get my robot vacuum cleaner and wifi extenders to work - these are WPA2 security, but the Smart Hub Plus is WPA3 by default, so none of these devices connected and the extenders are indispensible because my router is in one corner of the house and the walls are thick.  There is no mention of WPA3 potential issues  anywhere in the setup information.   Fortunately I have years of hard-earned experience on internet set-ups so I looked at the router settings and found there is an option to swap wireless to a "Compatible" mode i.e. WPA2.     

3) With WPA2 settings I was able to get the robot vacs to work, and I did not need to turn off the 5GHz frequency (the robots work on 2.4 GHz)  BUT neither my Wifi extenders nor my printer would pair using with WPS, I had to use the password route and re-enter the  mandatory 12 character password.

WhenI found I could not get the Smart Hub Plus to work with my wifi extenders I phoned EE who, with almost no delay, put me in contact with a technical person who looked at the router settings, agreed it should have worked in Compatible mode and ordered a EE-configured BT Hub 2 for me.  After that I found out about the WPS problem.

The BT Hub 2 arrived and works perfectly, it took me about 10 minutes to set everything up including my own passwords and WPS worked for the printers and the extenders.  The robots needed me to identify the router from a list, but that is easy.    The Hub 2 is more compact than the EE Smart Hub Plus router, which is useful as my router sits on top of my desktop PC base unit under an over-desk cupboard.   The Hub 2 status light is also easier to see - on the Smart hub you have to look at an angle to see it unless the room is dark when there is a slight glow in the two "EE" holes!    Definite case of form over function there.

I wanted to send an e-mail to EE Technical Support to thank them for the BT Hub 2 and to advise them about the WPS issue...but there is no e-mail address.  So I am posting this on the community as hopefully someone fro mTechnical Support reads these posts and my experience will be of use to other people who are "being migrated".

Regards

      

[JimM11]

@OldNumber1 https://ee.co.uk/help/broadband/getting-started

Does the EE Guide / Paper / Document supplied / reference anything about the link above etc.

[OldNumber1]

No, there is no mention of Compatibility Mode because it is written on the basis that you will be installing new EE extenders ..and with no consideration of other devices using WiFi e.g. printers, robot vacuum cleaners etc which may work on WPA2.

Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[JimM11]

@OldNumber1 Ok so it looks like just a poor written document with NO pointers to EE Help at all, once you get to the online help there is many many references to doing it all. Have no idea what is in an EE box now been gone nearly 18 months, and Comp mode was not even a feature at the time, and then broke the connection the day they introduced it.

[bobpullen]

@OldNumber1 - if the physical button (not that it's of any help for Compatible WiFi) did not cause the hub's status light to flash then there were seemingly more problems with the hub than simply the WPA2 dilemma. 

I do wonder what WiFi extenders you have. WPA3 has been a mandatory part of WiFi certification for 8 years now. The Hub 2 is of a similar age. Frustrating as it is, technology/standards sometimes outpace the devices we have 🤷

[OldNumber1]

My British General wifi extender sockets were purchased in 2022 and 2025 -
the latter to boost the signal in the conservatory. They use WPA2 or
WPA2-PSK. It may be that devices first produced after a certain date have
to be certified to WPA3 but, as these were probably on sale before the
cutoff date, they did not need to comply. I repeat, there is no mention in
the set up material that the standard set-up requires WPA3. Nor is the
"Compatible Mode" fully compatible. I suspect there are a lot of people
with the same sort of kit i.e purchased after 2018 but not WPA3 - why would
they update to something with WPA3 if their existing wifi works fine!





For the benefit of everyone out there, please don't post any more stuff on
this, it was meant to be info for users, not a basis for a discussion thread
interrogating the capability of my wifi extenders.



Cheers



Old Number1

[bobpullen]

@OldNumber1 - it's a discussion forum 😉

Last input from me: -

A device does not have to support WPA3 to be compatible with WPA3-Personal-Transition or WPA3-Personal-Compatibility security modes. That is the entire point of them: they are designed to be backwards compatible with WPA2 devices - and they largely are; it's a minority of devices that don't seem to 'like' it for one reason or another.

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@OldNumber1 wrote:
My British General wifi extender sockets were purchased in 2022 and 2025 -

---

Perhaps so, but if we're talking about these then the following says all it needs to: -

"Enjoy blazing-fast internet speeds with the BG Wi-Fi Extender Sockets. Featuring up to 300mbps through N300 Wi-Fi technology on a 2.4 GHz single band..."

'Blazing-fast' it most certainly isn't. That's WiFi 4, which is over 15 years old now (WiFi 8 is now on the horizon). In real-life conditions it likely has less than 100mbps of bandwidth to play with, and whatever is available needs to be shared between the act of repeating and actually serving WiFi to other devices. That's ignoring how susceptible 2.4GHz is to interference and congestion. If it works for you then great, but if you ever start to care about latency or speeds above the 'tens of mbps', then they're going to get in the way 🤷