Virgin Media rolls out Intelligent WiFi Plus to make working from home more stable

Virgin Media has announced a couple of updates to make customers’ Wi-Fi a bit more reliable now that we’re all stuck at home all day (again).

It comes in two parts: Intelligent WiFi and Intelligent WiFi Plus. The former is an update that has rolled out to all of the company’s broadband customers with Hub 3 and Hub 4 routers free of charge, and involves enhanced channel optimisation to manage bandwidth and adaptive band steering to ensure devices are on the right frequency.

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The second part is Virgin Media’s mesh Wi-Fi solution to eliminate Wi-Fi black spots. Available free of charge to customers on the Ultimate Oomph (£79 per month) and Gig1 packages (£62 per month) and £5 per month for those on cheaper packages, subscribers will be sent a Plume powered WiFi Pod that can be plugged in between the router and signal black spots to ensure the whole house is connected.

No engineer visit is required, and Virgin Media will apparently send out up to two additional units if one isn’t sufficient. Virgin says they can be unplugged and moved around at will, although if you need to do that then you probably qualify for the additional units.

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As well as filling in areas with patchy signal, the company says that the WiFi Pods are designed to deal with the problem of interference from next-door neighbours’ connections, as they will intelligently adjust settings to eliminate interference. On top of this, in conjunction with the WiFi Pods, Hub 3 and Hub 4 routers will analyse Wi-Fi signal strength and usage throughout the day to give each device the optimum point of access to smooth out any traffic bumps.

“Intelligent WiFi Plus is our most advanced and impressive WiFi service to date that will help remove broadband blackspots and bring faster and more reliable speeds throughout the home,” said Jeff Dodds, Virgin Media’s chief operating officer. “Whether our customers are working, streaming, browsing, playing or keeping connected online, the combo of new Hub features and WiFi Pods provides a step change in connectivity that won’t let you down.”

You can sign up for Intelligent WiFi Plus on the Virgin Media site, here