How the Cable & Telcos are Killing WiFi

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Powerful home WiFi routers. Public WiFi Hotspots everywhere. Sounds like a winning combination, right? Nope. 

The cable and telephone companies are doing it all wrong and you’re paying the price, literally and figuratively. 

With the ever increasing demand to be always connected, the communications companies have looked to fill the void with a variety of services and equipment. On the surface, who wouldn’t want a more powerful router to reach those far-flung corners of the home? Why wouldn’t we want wifi hotspots everywhere we go? Because collectively, at scale, they harm the RF (radio frequency) environment and actually SLOW down your wifi access. 

First some background

Consumer wifi is a polite communications protocol, which works by sending and receiving data over Radio Frequency in the 2.4 and 5 Gigahertz (GHz) range. When your wifi device hears another wifi device “talking” on the same channel, it waits its turn using a process set out in the IEEE 802.11 standard. (Think of a walkie-talkie, where only one person can speak at a given time). 

The more devices that are talking, the more frequently it must wait. The available amount of airtime to share is limited, it’s finite. So what’s the big deal with powerful routers and public hotspots then? In a word; Congestion.

In order for WiFi to work at its peak performance, it requires the signal received at your device be strong enough, while the interference or “noise” remains low enough. This vital measurement is called SNR: Signal to Noise Ratio. 

This is key because the amount of data (or throughput) that can be sent is determined by how clearly and cleanly a device can hear those very minute bits of data. This measurement is called MCS or Modulation and Coding Scheme. The clearer the channel, the higher the MCS Rate and the faster you can transmit data back and forth. You can have a strong signal (look Ma, full bars!) but if the interference is strong enough, the MCS Rate drops and you won’t have speedy WiFi. If it’s really bad you won’t be doing anything but staring at webpages that don’t go anywhere.

If you’d like to learn more about SNR & MCS, have a look at Qorvo’s White Paper entitled “WiFi Data Rates, Channels and Capacity” available as a PDF download here

The Rub

Ideally your router would be placed in a nice central location in your home or office, and the “bubble” of wifi coverage would envelop your home like a warm, communications and entertainment filled hug. In reality, the majority of routers are placed in a corner of the house where the “office” is, where the wiring panel is located, or in some random room. In each case, the wifi signal is typically broadcasting out to your neighbours’ homes, and theirs into yours, causing multiple wifi interference issues. 

Okay, so why are you blaming the Cable and Telcos you say? Because they aren’t even coming close to using best practices. They appear to not care at all. They flood the environment with wifi.

  • They leave routers on stock 80MHz wide channels, which effectively leave no available channels for you or your other neighbours. (this doesn’t take DFS channels into account, which come with their own challenges)

  • They leave channel settings on “auto” and the routers wind up choosing an oddball 2.4 GHz channel like CH 2 or CH 9, and step all over everyone else’s wifi experience with Adjacent Channel Interference (ACI). 

  • They plunk down the same router in a one bedroom apartment as a 4500 sq foot home, and leave it screaming loud, to step all over a bunch of neighbouring tenant’s wifi.

  • They keep adding in duty-cycle heavy devices that are constantly chewing up airtime, like HD & 4K WiFi connected set top boxes, WiFi security cameras and the like. 

These are all WiFi killers. And they just keep adding more devices with little to no regard for how lousy the quality of your wifi service really is. 

But then, why should they… they don’t support it! Sure, they may reluctantly come out and have a quick look, or remotely troubleshoot. But they don’t employ the simplest of best practices to curb many of these issues. Think the Tech that was dispatched must know all about WiFi because he or she works with it? Guess again. The amount of training these great folks receive is virtually nil. We don’t blame the Technicians, it’s the lack of training that’s the issue. If they haven’t taken a personal interest in WiFi, you’re sunk.

The Burn

Public Hotspots everywhere…. It was great early on when there weren’t so many. But in Western Canada we have so many that have been indiscriminately deployed that the wifi spectrum is completely saturated in many areas. Their Go-anywhere hotspots are trash, as you’re competing with so much self-interference and congestion that they’ve become practically useless in many locations.

A quick look at this map from the local cable company demonstrates just how asinine this really is. The blue areas are WiFi hotspots. How will businesses that require WiFi to operate find any clear spectrum?

A quick look at this map from the local cable company demonstrates just how asinine this really is. The blue areas are WiFi hotspots. How will businesses that require WiFi to operate find any clear spectrum?

This isn’t just anecdotal either. This stems from the pure frustration of having boots on the ground, attempting to deploy a decently performing WiFi network, while having no less than SIX WiFi hotspots screaming so loudly, that it’s causing interference on every channel that we want to use. It’s attempting to optimize a residential customer’s wifi while the neighbour on either side has a wireless TV box transmitting on 5GHz. Their signal is so close and strong, set on 80MHz channels, that we have no clear space to land. 

It’s crazy. It’s counter productive, and it feels negligent. It’s high time these multi-billion dollar companies stop killing our WiFi, while charging us more every year for the privilege of lowered performance.