BT reveals revamped Home Hub 5 and 300Mbps broadband service
The BT Home Hub 5 will be released during the latter half of 2013 and will let BT Infinity subscribers make the most of 300Mbit/s broadband speeds
Hot on the heels of the BT Home Hub 4 is the BT Home Hub 5, a device designed for users who want to make the most of their fast BT Infinity connections. Although it looks just like Home Hub 4, except for the Blue band running across it, the Home Hub 5 contains more advanced technology.
It has four Gigabit Ethernet ports instead of the single Gigabit Ethernet port and three Fast Ethernet ports found on the Home Hub 3 and 4. This is important because BT will make 300Mbit/s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband available later this year. The four Gigabit Ethernet ports allow users to take advantage of speeds greater than 100Mbit/s, so none of the download speed is wasted.
The Home Hub 5 also makes use of 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology, which allows for faster wireless transfer speeds than the more common 802.11n technology used in the Home Hub 3 and 4. 802.11ac Wi-Fi theoretically provides Gigabit transfer speeds, but our testing has shown that 802.11ac delivers speeds between 150Mbit/s to 280Mbit/s depending on the router and Wi-Fi adaptor used. Of course, such speeds are still fast enough to make good use of the new Infinity speeds.
The Home Hub 5 also has an integrated VDSL modem, so Infinity users will no longer need to use two separate boxes to provide their broadband.
When released, the Home Hub 5 will be included in all BT Infinity packages. We’ve been told that existing BT Infinity subscribers will be able to get a Home Hub 5 for free if they take out a new contract.
