A couple of subjects for discussion this month - the current status of the County Broadband “fibre to the premises” project for Warboys and the improvements you can make in your standard wifi in your home.
After a somewhat quiet period, County Broadband is very much more active! A new Project Manager for Warboys, Luke Smith, has been appointed who is very keen to get this back on its feet and running. I for one will be very pleased knowing that symmetrical 300mb speed (that’s about six times faster than I am currently getting both down and up) is back in my sights! My understanding is there are events planned for later this year and early next to drum up support as Warboys hasn’t reached the goal required to take the project forward just yet,
More good news is that rather than a massive falling off of interest, a very high number of those originally interested have not backed down but are even more excited about getting a utility we all need into Warboys.
With the affects of the pandemic set to continue for some time and BT with no immediate plans to upgrade their network, probably not before 2027, doesn’t it make sense to enable the fastest home broadband possible? So look up “County Broadband” and get your name down now!
Luke Smith, the Warboys Project Manager can be found on 07943 317416.
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So on to our second subject of improving your own wifi setup that is provided for free by your broadband internet supplier such as BT, Talktalk or Sky.
In the main, when you have broadband installed, you no longer get to see anyone from the provider as all the work is done in the local exchange or at the green box at the end of the street, The result is that the modem itself, the black box that comes through the door for you to plug in when told by the provider, is not usually touched by the user other than to power it up. In many cases this is absolutely fine and works well all its life but there are cases where the standard issue modem is in totally the wrong place. If you have a long thin house and the telephone line inlet is by the front door, you might find that you don’t get any wifi in the kitchen and only see acceptable speeds in the front two rooms upstairs and downstairs. This will affect your TV viewing experience with glitches and buffering and your normal emails and texting pictures will become slow and frustrating.
Ideally, the modem needs to be in the centre of the home as all modems project their wireless signals in a sphere with the modem in the centre - you need to get the house to sit in the very middle of this sphere if you can so you get as much of the house covered by wifi as possible.
Fixes:-
If you are comfortable doing so can check the settings and/or reset the modem to its defaults as I have seen several cases where it has been “fiddled with” over the years and critical settings have been changed inadvertently. For example, a whole band has been turned off so the fastest channels are not being used!
An extension cable to allow you to move the modem more centrally in the house provided you can hide the extra cable safely away under the carpet or around the skirting boards. No trip hazards!
A slightly more costly upgrade is the installation of a mesh network where you turn off the wifi from the provider’s modem and rely on a considerably more powerful wifi generator such as Netgear Orbi, Lynksys or Amazon Eero. These are one, two, three or four little boxes placed in the critical rooms that only need a mains plug, except for the one next to the modem of course, which will give you a massive wifi performance boost throughout the house.
Call me if you want more advice on any of this or if you need help with your modem or a mesh network installation, on 07714 016830