Hi all

I am currently on 2degrees fibre looking at switching over to Skinny's $65 fibre plan basically just because it's cheaper. Alongside that happening, our household are sick of the poor wifi signal at the far end of the house, it's so bad that we often turn off wifi and use mobile data instead which is stupid. I'm looking at buying the TP-Link Deco M5 Whole-Home Mesh Wi-Fi System from PB Tech which comes with 3 units and appears to have generally good reviews on the net, on PB Tech's website, and on this forum. We're average users of the net, using it for WFH and Netflix etc, a bit of PlayStation but not hardcore gamers or anything like that. The PlayStation and one TV connect to the 2degrees-supplied modem via ethernet, everything else is wireless.

My questions are as follows:
1. Does anyone see any major downsides to switching to Skinny? Their customer service staff seem a bit rubbish based on my enquiries to date, but I don't expect to need them much once we're up and running so that's probably not a deal-breaker. As far as I understand it (without getting technical) they're basically just a budget version of Spark so the quality of the actual product (fibre broadband) should be solid, right?

2. Skinny offer their own "smart modem", however, if you supply your own modem, you save $60 over the first 12 months of the plan. Would owning the Deco M5 mean the "smart modem" is unnecessary, or do I *have* to get the "smart modem" and plug the Deco M5 into that?

3. If using the "smart modem" alongside the Deco M5 is optional, what are the advantages / disadvantages of using it vs. just plugging the Deco M5 directly into the ONT?

Thanks in advance for any advice