Do you have a new, super-fast, super-wonderful BT Infinity Fibre Optic broadband package which downloads (and indeed uploads) everything at the speed of light? If so, I am sure you are very pleased with it. We are with ours.
And in all the promotional bumph which no doubt came your way with your new system, did BT tell you about their fantastic network of over five million wifi hotspots all over the UK and freely available to BT Infinity customers? Virtually anywhere you find yourself in the UK, you will be able to log on via a BT Hot Spot and ‘connect’. Great ! So much more efficient than Boris’ wi-fi enabled lamp-posts lining the streets of the City of London. If you want to know more, they tell you here on the BT site:
‘Our wi-fi is totally free and unlimited at places like Starbucks, Welcome Break, Hilton, Network Rail, shopping centres, 12 major city centres and more.’ Gosh, five million Starbucks and Welcome Breaks – I knew there were a lot of them, but five million?……
Well, no, there aren’t five million cafés, hotels and railways stations, but, if you count all of us who have signed up to BT, there probably are five million BT users with BT hubs installed to enable their new super-fast broad band. And what BT do not actually tell you on their ‘hot spot’ page, is that the majority of their hotspots live in the BT hubs installed in their private customers’ (yours and my) living rooms, halls and studies. Given that the hot spot takes minimal band width (too small for you to notice or to affect your costs) and that the hubs are extremely widely spread even in relatively low population density areas, it is an extremely efficient, low-cost, low-energy way to provide on-line access to huge areas and huge numbers of people. Fantastic!
But, there is just one problem. (Well, actually, there are two but let us deal with the main one first.)
What happens if you do not want, for whatever reason, to use wifi? Although it is massively convenient, there is an ever growing mountain of evidence suggesting that exposure to low level electromagnetic radiation, such as wifi, may have all kinds of very serious, population-wide health implications. Some people already react very badly and are made seriously ill by radiation from wifi, mobile phones etc. Some people just prefer using wired connections on the grounds of efficiency – more reliable and better signal.
The BT Infinity system, like other similar BT, Virgin etc systems, comes with wifi automatically enabled, but it does allow you to go into the hub and turn off your own wifi access so that you use only wired, ethernet connections.* But, within that hub there is a second connection – the one which connects you with the hot-spot network – and turning off your own internal wifi connections does not disconnect you from the hotspot network.
Now, of itself, there is nothing wrong with this. But what is wrong with it is that BT do not make this clear to you. They do not tell you, when you sign up for Infinity, that you will be automatically connected (opted in) to their hot-spot network (BT Openzone); they do not tell you that turning off your own internal wifi does not disconnect you from the Openzone network and, even if you are techie enough to have got this far, they do not tell you how to disconnect yourself from that network. Well, they do but in such an obscure and roundabout way that, unless you had spent two hours scanning the site and knowing exactly what you were looking for (as I just have) you would never find it. See below **
Now, for the average BT customer, this is simply not an issue. But for someone who is either already electrosensitive or who is concerned about out excessive use of low level electromagnetic devices, then it is very much an issue as it means that they are being bathed, 24/7 in that very radiation that they are anxious to escape. The situation for them is exactly the same as having a smart meter installed or using a standard hands free telephone: wireless signals are being transmitted continuously throughout their living and sleeping space and they cannot escape them. But whereas in the case of the smart meter or the hands-free phone, they know about it and may be able to take some avoiding action, in the case of the hot-spot hubs they do not even know about it so can take no avoiding action at all.
This also begs the question – problem number two – of whether BT has any right to install this system, using our hubs for which we pay, without specifically asking and getting out permission, regardless of whether or not being bathed in wifi signals 24 hours a day is harmful.
The very least that they should be doing is to make both the information about the the Openzone network, and especially how to opt out, easily available on their Infinity site and through their customer service lines. Obviously, to do so would run the risk that a larger number of customers would choose to do so, thereby reducing their hot-spot network coverage but that, in my book, is a risk that we have every right to expect them to have to take.
* Finding how to turn off even your internal wifi is not easy – I could not find any form of words to enter into the ‘Help’ box which came up with useful instructions. Finally, via a forum I got this:
Once you are set up you will be given a link to your home page. Once you get there you will be asked to change a default admin password and then you should be able to follow instructions to disable your wifi.’ Good luck!
**On the free BT Wi-fi page mentioned above, if you spool down to the very bottom, just above the ads you will find a small drop down box called ‘The legal stuff’. If you open it it tells you about ‘Unlimited BT wifi minutes and sends you to another site, www.bt.com/btwifi, for details. Once you get there it offers you the option to check how many wifi minutes you have used and to check ‘whether your BT home hub is opted in’ and tells you, slightly obscurely, what this means. You click also through to yet another screen where you can enter your BTinternet address and password you will be able to disconnect yourself.
Alternatively you could have got to this screen rather more easily by logging in to their dedicated BT Openzone site, called BT Fon – but to do that you have, of course, to know about the existence of BT Fon!
If BT wants to use the home hubs it supplies as openzone hotspots, it should be upfront with users and give them a clear and simple opt-out route. Actually I would go further and say that opted out should be the default and the instructions should be about how to opt in.
Wifi is controversial. It has has been removed from French schools because of concerns about children’s health and the German government has warned its citizens to avoid overexposure to electro smog.
As in many other areas of health some people will be sensitive and others will not, so BT should be open about what it is doing and leave the decision about whether or not to participate to the individual user. BT’s activities are bordering on the dishonest and Ofcom should investigate as a matter of urgency.
We have just received the following email:
Our neighbours had a BT Home Hub 3 installed after an infinity upgrade. I then noticed weird tingling up my
right arm and a weird warming feeling in the side of my head if I sat in my living room with my right-hand side to their router.
After several hundreds of £ of EM Paint, fortunately the symptoms have gone away.
We don’t have any other wireless equipment as we don’t want pulsed microwaves in our home.
It seems unfortunate that as a home owner you have no choice about your neighbours wifi ‘invading’ your space other than to spend money yourself. Why can’t providers fit directional antennas that keep the signal in the householders home and not the neighbours?
Hi Michelle
I followed the instruction and opted out, but now well past 72 hours and it is still transmitting the free Wi-Fi service, anyone had a similar experience?
Blimey…. You are you sure you ‘opted out’ on this page to the Wifi ? https://www.bt.com/wifi/secure/status.do?s_cid=con_FURL_btfon/status…….
Michelle, this is a wonderful post and helped me solve my problem with BT Infinity in minutes – and without having to phone them up. I’ve been electrosensitive for three years but when BT assured me that Infinity could be used without Wi-Fi, I saw no reason not to upgrade. Within minutes of having become connected, I was experiencing severe symptoms – and I didn’t know why until I read this post. If Wi-Fi affects some people so badly, we can be sure it will affect everyone in some way – even if they as yet don’t realise. Is it a health crisis in the making? I am seriously worried that there are fewer and fewer places where one can guarantee being free from EMR. And problems caused by neigbours can only become more prevalent.
Hi Linda – I am so glad!!! And yes – I think it is a health crisis in the making – and not only for those of us who are already electrosensitive but of the rest of the population who are not yet but, sadly, if exposure continues at its current rate, may well become so.
Hi Michelle,
Although I have now opted out of Wi-Fi – on all levels – I am still experiencing more sensitivity with BT Infinity than with previous BT connection. I may have to switch back. Do you know if there is more EMR from high speed connections – and if so, is it coming from the computer or from the monitor – or the hub? Very concerned for the future as I live in a flat and have no control over what others install.
Hi Linda – Are you absolutely sure that you have turned BT Fon/Openzone off as well as the internal wifi? There is no reason why a high speed connection should produce any more EMR than the old one.
I presume that you are using an LED screen? Nearly all computer screens are these days and if it is the same screen as you were using before, then that should not affect you either.
The only other possibility is that one of your neighbours also installed Infinity around he same time as you did and you are reacting to theirs… Do you know them well enough to at least ask them? Although they may not be keen to turn off their wifi they might not be too keen to be being used as a BT hub so might be prepared to turn off the Openzone. Worst case scenario, if you knew that they were and which wall it ws coming through you could always screen that wall on your side either with carbon paint or with fabric. Spool down this page on the EMFields site to find details of paints and screening materials.
Good luck….
Oh please:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity
Hi Michelle,
This is a great article. I wrote about this problem myself last year. The problem I’ve encountered is that BT just do not want to turn this service off. I live on a busy high street and think that they make too much money from my additional WiFi Hotspots to allow me to turn them off. Time and time again they get switched off, only then to be turned back on, behind my back. Not only that the BT staff compulsively lie over the telephone about the service. The staff are trained to initially tell you that the hotspots you see coming from your router aren’t yours but somebody else’s. Even when you advise that when the router is switched off, they disappear, yet still they try and dissuade you from the problem. They also falsely claim that the extra hotspots have no effect on your broadband service whatsoever, and this is 100% false despite what is argued/mentioned on other blogs. It does affect your broadband service and the signals broadcast in your home as you have mentioned. BT is actively committing fraud here on a mass scale as they withhold information about the full impact of your new broadband service when making the sale, meanwhile making good profit while OFCOM are turning a blind eye. They also don’t turn the service off promptly, again very suspicious, especially when they can turn it off straight away? I’ve spent many hours trying to solve this problem and now have to walk away from BT. I just do not trust them at all – even with a 3rd party router, which BT will try their best to not disclose that you can use if you wish. I am shocked by BT, very underhand.
Link to my article: http://barneylacat.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/free-bt-wifi-hotspots-what-bt-broadband-doesnt-broadcast/
Barney LaCat is quite right when he says that BT have created their transnational wifi network by piggy backing on the wifi routers they supply to their customers. Every wifi router supplied by BT comes with BT fon enabled, so by default their customers are part of the BT fon network. BT do not tell you they are doing this, not do they seek your permission. This is certainly not acceptable and its not entirely clear whether it is even legal, but OFCOM have clearly decided to go along with it. Another fine example of the power big multinationals have over their ‘Regulators’.
There are things you can do about it. BT does provide a way of switching off the BT fon transmitter in your wifi router, but from time to time they will update the software in your router – without asking you of course – and when that happens BT fon is switched on again. You can check your status and switch BT fon off here. The problem is solved if you use a non BT router. My house is wired for ethernet. Ethernet provides a much faster and more stable way of connecting computers to each other and the internet. It also means that you can use an ethernet only router which is wifi free and over which BT has no control. If you really want to use wifi, a non BT wifi router will actually solve the problem as it is only BT supplied routers which contain the fon transmitter.
It is also possible to hack the BT supplied modem – a Huawei HG612 – to act as an ethernet router as well as a modem which means that you can ditch the secondary router completely. Details of how to do that can be found here.
This is a deeply unsatisfactory situation which OFCOM should be dealing with, but – as OFCOM is regulated by BT rather than the other way round – it probably won’t happen.
Thanks for telling me how to remove this stupid thing. However, there’s a few things that are just wrong with the article.
So called ‘electosensitivity’ has been proven to not exist, and there is no scientific evidence of it causing any problems. It simply has no effect, and anyone that knows anything about electromagnetic signals will know that the frequencies of WiFi simply don’t interact with us, and even if they did, the power output from them is incredibly weak so would have no effect anyway.
Saying that having it active will not affect your connection is complete bullshit. Firstly, it will cut down your bandwidth, limiting your speeds. I only get ~20Mbps as it is, I’d definitely notice if it got any slower. But that’s not much of an issue compared to the latency issues it causes. With another connection, the hub has to do two things at once (an impossibility- it just switches from one to the other repeatedly very quickly). This causes massive latency issues and ruins connection stability, making online applications and games unreliable and unplayable.
Another issue ignored is the massive security problem it causes. Once you’re connected to somebody else’s hub, you can use two simple yet very powerful programs to redirect all traffic through you, then record all the data. You can access all the private information the owner of the hub sends and receives, including passwords and bank information.
If you want to go with BT Infinity but also want zero wifi you have to go with the BT Hub 3 – The 5 Hub does not allow you to completely disable WiFi even if you turn it off. You can find out more here: http://wavegoodbye.info/How_to_turn_off_Wireless.html
I don’t have BT INFINITY I have basic BT Broadband with a Draytek 2860 router I discovered BTWIFI With FON on my channel list on my Draytek router, I am not happy that BT have now put their Software on my router without my permission.
“Michelle says
06/28/2014 at 17:31
There is no reason why a high speed connection should produce any more EMR than the old one.”
Where’s your evidence for this ?
Apparently there are 3 signals emitting from a BT infinity router; your own network (which you can switch off), BT wifi and BT fon.
The only way you can get the hotspot turned off if by calling them. I tried to opt out via live chat and my chat complaint was ‘lost’.
I’ve had BT Infinity for a couple of years now, , hard wired with the wifi turned off. There are a variation of 7 neighbour’s wifi networks in our home. We were using a BT wifi hotspot for our mobile devices, not realising the signal was coming from our own router. The ‘wireless’ light on the front of our router was out as we had ‘turned off’ the wifi. It’s very deceitful of BT.
Buy an openreach fibre modem and a 3rd party router and you’ll never have to worry about Bt hotspot hosting ever again. Simple.
This article suggests that OFCOM turns a blind eye to this issue. Perhaps swamping the inbox of BBC’s WATCHDOG would escalate this issue nationally if picked up so that they (OFCOM) are more likely to respond in some way; (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/a-z/by/watchdog/all).
The main points are the surreptitious deception of piggy backing this facility to ‘your’ router, the bandwidth that may be lost to it, the cost of the power it may consume when responding as a hotspot (as opposed to it being idle when you are not using it).
However, at currently £15 a month for casual internet connections (if you are not a BT broadband customer) using their BT-FON, perhaps each and every unwitting hotspot owner should be able to claim a payback of some of this usage allowance, then we all profit!
WiFi-FON (again). I’ve had a wired Ethernet connection for decades. When my desktop died I bought a laptop as an interim measure and connected easily via Ethernet. However, when looking thru my new computer I came across a whole bunch of possible connections and just to try out what this WiFi Fon is, I typed in my modem’s admin password. Big mistake.
BT India tells me I am “off” but I don’t believe them; they say I’m in a wifi hotspot and that is why in bottom righthand it is showing FON. It’s a muddle. I do appear to be connected by Ethernet, but in the system tray the icon for BTWiFi Fon is still showing up, though WiFi on my computer is off. I have an elderly 2.0 Home Hub. If I get into the hub manager would I be able to disable FON? Or should I change the hub’s password?
I do not have a BT internet email address, and BT said they cannot opt me out themselves. The chap I spoke to clearly does not know what to do, or he’s been instructed to keep me as one of the piggybacks for others’ use.
Hi Michelle,thanks for your blog it is great. We are moving into a new build and Ive just found out the only option we have is to go with BT and their superfast infinity with the smart hub. As I am already aware of the health dangers of WiFi I wanted to have hard wired broadband points. Ive called BT and they said they only have the infinity and I we can not have broad band. Can you please give me some advice about the best course of action? Is there no way I can use an ethernet connection from a router to my computer with infinity?
Please keep up the good work with raising awareness about the dangers of WIFI , the majority of people have no idea
healthy wishes
Louise from Somerset
Louise – I asked our webmaster/IT man and this is what he said:
Its perfectly possible to have BT infinity and use ethernet. That is what we do here. There are two ways to do it:
1. Use the modem and router supplied by BT but turn off the wifi in the router. The wifi router also has ethernet ports which will allow you to attach a wired network. Turning off the wifi is not difficult but requires you to use the set-up menu for the router. There will be instructions with the router and you shouldn’t have much difficulty finding a guide on the internet for your specific box. The slightly more complicated issue is turning off BT’s sneaky ‘fon’ hotspot transmitter. You can’t do that in the router menu as BT doesn’t really admit it is there. BT have to do it for you.There is a link here to tell you how to do that.
2. The simpler and better solution is to connect the BT modem to a non BT, ethernet router which does not incorporate wireless. The only one I know of is the TP-Link R600 VPN. Amazon will supply here. The only slight issue is that you may have to get a PPPoE User name and password from BT. I have been using one of these for around five years and they are fast and completely bomb proof. Very much better than wifi and alot better than using the ethernet ports on the BT wifi router.
I hope that helps.
Michelle – thanks for the blog post. It was only chancing upon “BT WiFi: Active” in my router settings (Home Hub 6 – Advanced settings | Technical log) after I’d turned off wifi that alerted me there was an issue, and your blog was the first site I found.
I tried the links suggested in the blog and comments, but I could not use my BT ID to log in. I’ve just discussed this with a BT WiFi helpdesk guy, and he said that you should do it this way:
Go to http://www.bt.com
Login to account
Go to ‘MyBT’
Click on ‘Manage your extras’
Find the ‘BT Wi-fi’ section, then click on ‘Manage BT Wi-fi’
You then should be able to opt-out.
You should get this message: “Thank you. We are processing your request to opt out of BT Wi-fi, you will be opted out within 24 hours.”
The MyBT web page immediatley showed BT Wifi as inactive, but it took 45 mins and a couple of reboots (not sure if I had to reboot the router or not, but thought it might force something) to get the router to report it was not active.
I checked with my phone:
before disable – I was picking up both a BTWifi-with-FON and BTWiFi-X access point. These both disappeared when I switched the router off
after disable – neither was available
I suffer headaches from wifi, and my headaches are worse with 2.4GHz than with 5GHz wifi. So if wifi can’t be turned off, maybe switching frequency will help (some older devices don’t support 5GHz and AFAIK 5GHz may not travel as far, but should give better speeds).
Re Matt’s post above ( 08/17/2015 at 17:11 – https://michellesblog.co.uk/are-you-hosting-a-bt-hot-spot/#comment-503057) I don’t see anything on that link saying the HH5 couldn’t have wifi fully disabled. The linked blog post was written at a time when only the 1/1.5/2/3 Home Hubs were available, so saying that the HH3 was the only one that could have it disabled was probably correct at the time it was written, but may not be correct now.
The trouble is that I do not have a BT.com email address. ( may have done 15 yrs ago but not now). “MyBT” where I view my bills and usage is under a non-BT email address, so when I try to do as you say, a non-BT address is not recognised and I cannot proceed any further – so under ‘Manage your extras’/ ‘BT Wi-fi’ section/ ‘Manage BT Wi-fi’ nuffink happens.
With reference to Michelle’s reply to Louise earlier today, my suggestion of a TP-Link R600 VPN router may not work with the BT Home Hub 6.
The Home Hub 4 BT supplied to us a few years ago had a separate Huawei Echolife HG612 modem which connected to the Home Hub 4. It was therefore relatively simple to replace the Home Hub 4 with a TP Link R600. It seems that the Home Hub 6 combines the modem and router in a single box and so they probably can’t be separated. BT might be willing to supply a Huawei modem, but probably not. You would have to ask them.
You can get a used one on ebay here, but that makes the process a bit more complicated, so just turning off the wifi and BT fon is probably the better solution.
Lida – I thought the MyBT login at http://www.bt.com accepted non-BT email addresses. Though I have changed my login to a xxx@btinternet.com address by going to:
MyBT | Manage your extras | Manage BT mail
then creating an email address, and then changing my account email to that. (I don’t know why they use your old email address as your new login when you sign up with BT, cause it causes no-end of problems). Though I’m not sure you’re able to get that far to do that even. Maybe contact BT?
Michelle – the Home Hub 6 does not have a WAN out socket to allow it’s use as modem only (the Home Hub 5 does have a WAN socket), though I have read something about putting another router in the HH6’s DMZ. I’ve read that BT use Huawei and ECI fibre cabinets, and that the best solution is to use a modem to match the cabinet in your street. Though this isn’t absolutely necessary. This site has more info: http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/fttc-cabinets.htm. My cabinet is ECI and most people recommend this modem for ECI:
BT Openreach Modem ECI Telecom BFocus V-2FUb/r Rev B
Nick – Thanks for your reply. Dealing with BT India shortens my life so I will not attempt that again. They too do not know how to make the ‘Fon’ disappear completely. My understanding is the following. Although WiFi is switched off on my computer, and I am connected by Ethernet, I can still see “BT WiFi FON”. BT swears that this just indicates availability of a hotspot near to me.
I don’t know who to believe. MyBT definitell ONLY accepts bt.com addresses to proceed.
Lida – yep, BT India is not fun. Though I use their online chat system instead of phone, read a book, and look at the chat log every now and again to see if they’ve replied. Much less stressful!
I could log in to MyBT with a non-BT email address as my BT ID yesterday (before I changed it to a BT email address).
To test the WiFi-with-FON I held my phone next to the router, enabled wifi on the phone, connected to the strong signal WiFi-with-FON, then switched my router off. The WiFi-with-FON connection disappeared. I then switched my router on and the connection reappeared (there was a weak WiFi-with-FON that kept appearing and disappearing. I assume from a neighbour), but the strong signal was definitely there with my router on and not there with my router off. Did this a few times to be sure.
I think Nick is right. BT will log you out of the fon system although it can get turned on again if they do a software update. Using an Openreach modem with a non wifi router does work well and is not that difficult to set up as long as you are able to set up a PPPoE connection on your computer. If you are only using one computer you can bypass the router entirely and connect the LAN1 output of the modem directly to to the computer with an ethernet cable. Again this involves setting up a PPPoE connection on the computer.
Thanks NICK. Wi-Fi on my computer is turned Off (this is shown in settings); also confirmed by going to MyBT and seeing that I have not taken up Wi-Fi. HOWEVER, the ambiguity is – although I am connected by Ethernet, it also states “BTWiFi with FON connected”. The icon in the system tray too states “BTWiFi with Fon internet access”.
BT says that it does not mean I am using wifi, but simply allows me the option to. But I never got this before. This is a new computer (still using Home Hub 2.0), and it’s only since I typed in my router ID that status changed from a simple “Ethernet” to the ambiguity jumble above.
Hi Nick and Michelle,
I am sorry I haven’t replied until now.
Your advice has been invaluable.
Firstly I logged onto my BT account and logged onto ‘manage your extras’ and opted out of our home hub being hot-spot network (BT Openzone); from the Openzone network . When you disable you can not log onto BT hot spots yourself on your mobile. But most places have Wifi anyways, so not a big problem.
I didn’t realise I needed to do the next part until I read Nick’s message.
I found my BT Smart Hub user guide , this must be the latest HUb on page 10, the hub manager page you can log on with your Admin password, which is on the back of the hub and disabled Wi Fi.
I am now wired into broadband using an ethernet cable , there are 3 ethernet ports on our hub. I am then using BT’s Broadband extender 600 kit ( from currys ) this uses the electric wiring in your house. You place one broadband extender into a power socket near the router and connect them with an ethernet cable, you then place the other broadband extender a power socket in the room you want to have your computer and using the other ethernet cable connect the extender to your computer.
There are 3 ethernet ports in the router so you could do this in 3 different rooms. We are hardwiring our office, daughters room and family room.
I wish more people would take the dangers of Wi Fi more seriously. I’ve got ill by sitting and working infront of a computer connected to Wi Fi, I feel much better now the computer is hard wired.
Spread the word!
healthy wishes
Louise
Louise – What a stunning piece of information! Thank you very much. I did not know you could do this with Ethernet and no one in PC World or indeed my own IT chap that I use has ever mentioned this.
In approx. 3 yrs time it will be mandatory to have a smart meter for our electricity, which is Wi-Fi. I was talking to my energy provider and was told this is to (i) eliminate meter readers visiting properties, and (ii) eliminate over- or underestimated bills. What if you avoid having Wi-Fi in the house, what then I asked? I could tell she was not sure, but said that if customer could prove a sensitivity to EMF then “I suppose” it wont be forced on them. Yeah, prove how?
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is pure nonsense, electromagnetic radiation is everywhere. That’s right, EVERYWHERE!!! And as for Openzone, it’s damn simple to turn off…
I haven’t been able to turn it off. If I go into manage bt WiFi there is no option to disable it.
The reason I want to turn it off is because both wifi-x and fon appear to be broadcasting a stronger signal than my own personal WiFi. Is this possible? Why is this?
Surely they should be at least equal?
I rang bt to tell them I wanted to opt out, they said ok, will take 48 hours. About an hour later someone rang me back and advised there was a problem with it and they needed to log it with their engineers in Newcastle (!). They said it would take 28 days to disconnect me.
About the stronger signal on wifi-x and fon, they claimed it was because it was a new router it would take 10 days to “settle down”. Aye alright.
Hi All
read on : BT told me for 7 years that my home hub 2 was not giving me wifi if we did not use it. They never explained to turn off. After my wife had miscarriage we researched and were horrified. Our by home hub 2 was over 100,000 uW/m2. Even after we turned it off with help from BT Indai! it still had radiation of > 100,000. At 10,000uW a rat study had 50% miscarriage and a mouse population became strerile after 5 generatons. My 4 year agonising hip injury cleared up within a week of removing the wifi.
I now have hub 3 with wifi off. But my neighbour has hub 5 and the radiation levels are 30,000 in our bedroom, so have spenbt £3k in sheilding mesh ( paint is useless for wifi, but good for phone towers).
We must demand bt provide directional rourers and wifi blockers for owners to protect neighbours. Austria has wifi of 0.1 uW BT = > 100,000 and now they boast it can pass gthrough 3 walls . Can you imagine a childs brain
Thanks for bringing this to the attention of those that have this sensitivity, however, I do feel that you are pushing water uphill, let me explain why.
I actually wanted to use BT Hotspots to enable me to care for a sick relative and work from their home. They do not have BT wifi but it seems that at least 6 neighbours DO.
Unfortunately BT is a victim of it’s own success, I could not get a reliable connection because there are too many BT Wifi signals all competing with each other.
A typical user has no way to choose which one they want to connect to so the result is the connections all overlap and so they keep dropping.
Determined to resolve this I got a wifi analyser which showed the signals, their strength and channels. I even got a repeater to try and home in on a specific BT Wifi Signal but it was futile because of all the other BT Wifi signals.
It seems that BT is not happy to just transmit the BTWifi-With-FON signal, it ALSO transmits another wifi signal called BT-Wifi-X, as well as the BT wifi signal for the subscriber e.g. BT-Hub5-ABC1. The BT-Wifi-X is an encrypted hotspot connection that uses BT Wifi App.
BT is now transmitting both a 5GHz and a 2.4GHz signal, that makes 4 wifi’s per BT Customer! So 24 wifi’s in the flat I was in (just a block of 8 but with some similar sized blocks across the way)
Bear in mind these are microwaves, for a demo, heat up your coffee in the microwave and watch your wifi signal get corrupted on your phone until the microwave finishes and then disipates. If you put an egg in a microwave and put it on you will see it explode quite dramatically. Makes you wonder what wifi is doing to our brain cells.
It seems to me that BT has a completely flawed strategy here, not only is it blasting us all with these wifi signals, but it has the most powerful router in the market, none of which cut back if they detect other BT wifi signals in the area. So it is chaos.
The wifi signals do not change their channel, they do not reduce power to prevent conflicts, so they are not actually delivering anything for customers.
Add this to the plethora of other signals from Sky, TalkTalk and BT owned Plusnet and it really is chaos.
For a graphical view checkout this image
i.imgur.com/QJ7nbfl.png
Personally I do not see the need for both BT Wifi and BTwifi-with-FON, I think the encrypted BT-Wifi-X network should be abandoned by BT. Perhaps they would also have the AC and N (5GHz and 2.4Ghz) networks not installed by default but chosen by customer. AC will not be seen by older devices so have the BT Customer choose between N and AC explaining that AC is higher capacity but may not work with old devices or reach the far reaches of your home. N is fast enough for most and reaches the furthest.
At least this would cut back on some of this wifi swamping, which is not helping BT Hotspot customers.
Just a head’s up, switching to another router will not stop BT being able to log into your router and turn it back on.
All routers have been POZZED with a backdoor added to the hardware to enable remote administration by the ISP both automatically (as part of algorithms/artificial intelligence managing a wider system like Fon) and manually by random employees (including the foreign nationals in the global outsourced tech support BT uses, you can see how that might be an issue for competition/trade secrets etc)
For example if you talk to support about a connection issue with attenuation etc and they get frustrated enough about not being able to find the problem, eventually they’ll just log in to your router themselves and try fix it.
cult of the dead cow
cyberpunk’s not dead
Seriously? Wifi is physically unable to harm people. Stop it with your tinfoil hat scare tactics and fear mongering. Plus I’m pretty sure you can disable that BT feature.