Does BT Whole Home WiFi work with Virgin Media?

To get the suspense out of the way nice and early: yes, BT Whole Home WiFi does work with Virgin Media. How do I know? Because I have Virgin Media and BT Whole Home WiFi in my house, and it’s worked without trouble since the day I bought it.

And it was one of the best purchases I ever made. Before BT Whole Home, my MacBook Pro would hit 100Mbits/sec anywhere in the house, but my desktop PC would get constant dropouts and speeds of under 10Mbits/sec unless moved to the living room… which wasn’t ideal given I’d just gone freelance. After trying a bunch of different wireless cards, BT Whole Home saved the day.

How does BT Whole Home WiFi work?

BT Whole Home – and similar products like Google Wifi and Tenda Nova MW3 – is a mesh Wi-Fi solution. That means that the first disc connects to your router and then the next disc attaches itself to the previous one, creating a wider area of Wi-Fi signal if placed intelligently.

Note that BT Whole Home WiFi works differently from other mesh Wi-Fi extenders, though, as you will still need your original ISP-supplied router: you simply connect them with the supplied Ethernet cable.

It’s certainly worked for me, with a steady 100Mbits/sec in every room in my house now.

Will BT Whole Home WiFi work with Vodafone/Sky Broadband/others?

Although I only have experience with Virgin Media – I wasn’t going to sign up to any broadband provider that makes me bother with an entirely superfluous landline – the answer to that question is “yes”. 

The BT Shop page about Whole Home WiFi has a product comparison table at the bottom of the page, and every version has “Yes” written in the box labeled “Works with all broadband providers”. So fill your boots, whether you’re on Vodafone, Sky, Plusnet or whatever.

Will BT Whole Home work with Sky Q?

The one mild exception I can find is Sky Q – and it’s fixable. Essentially, because Sky Q boxes operate their own mesh system to communicate with each other, you may find speeds struggle a bit.

This thread on the Sky forum suggests a simple solution: plug an Ethernet cable from the Sky Q box into the back of a Whole Home disk. Judging by the number of grateful responses, this solution seems pretty successful… 

How much is BT Whole Home Wi-Fi?

One of the best things about this service is that it’s relatively cheap. At the time of writing, you can buy a two-disc pack (suitable for apartments and smaller homes) for £125 and a three-disc pack for £180.