Tips to get back online when the Wi-Fi is out
ALTAMONTE SPRINGS — Bethe Putney Sans was unwinding on Feb. 6 when things started going wrong.
“I was trying to stream ‘X-Files’ ... and it just went out,” she said. Her husband and roommate were all in separate rooms in their Altamonte Springs home with streaming issues of their own. “My husband was texting me that his music wasn’t working, then my roommate and his TV.”
Across the state, thousands of Spectrum customers lost their internet that night when an unnamed third party cut through one of the company’s fiber lines, according to a statement from parent company Charter Communications.
A night of interrupted downtime is annoying, but outages can mean serious money. Small businesses can lose up to $427 per minute of lost connection, according to data security firm Carbonite. And Amazon lost an estimated $34 million in sales from a single hour down in 2021, according to The
Independent.
“Data access has become critical for everybody,” said Eric Plam, vice president and general manager of tech company Skyroam. “Everybody has a plan for water and food in an emergency ... so why not have a backup for data as well?”
Most homes use a wireless router connected to a modem that sends a Wi-Fi signal throughout the house.
Plam said everyone should make sure their crucial devices, such as laptops and tablets, include LTE reception, the kind of wireless internet provided by cell towers for smartphones.
Devices with that capability are typically more expensive than their Wi-Fi-only counterparts and can require a separate data plan from a carrier such as Verizon or AT&T.
“I hate to say it, but sometimes, you’ve got to spend the money,” Plam said.
A battery-powered Wi-Fi hotspot that will access LTE signals and turn them into Wi-Fi for nearby devices can also help a
household get through an outage. Plam’s company makes a hotspot generator, the Solis, but he points out certain models of smartphones and other devices can also come equipped with this capability.
But Putney Sans, 40, says outages aren’t the only times the internet can seem hard to reach in her house, which she says runs all its internet and gaming devices on the Wi-Fi signal.
Plam said one of the most common issues doesn’t come from equipment at all; instead, it’s the plan a customer purchased.
“Make sure you know what speed you’re being offered,” he said, adding that the more devices are running on the same signal “it’s going to strain that network.”
Joe Durkin, a spokesman for Charter, said in an email customers should call Spectrum support to see if the problem is coming from the home equipment or the company’s.
A former tech support worker, Putney Sans says she knows a lot of internet users cause their own trouble. “I’d have to tell people ... ‘You’ve got 400 browser tabs open. Of course, it’s running slow,’ ” she said.
Plam says sometimes even the positioning of the Wi-Fi router can affect the performance.
“Think about how the signal travels,” he said. “How would you get through a brick wall? How would you get upstairs?”
All Wi-Fi devices have an antenna, though it is usually internal, not like the old collapsible rod. When the router isn’t directly aligned with the device’s antenna, “it means the signal is bouncing,”
Plam said.
In older houses, this is especially a problem, as old masonry often included plaster with chicken wire, which hinders the signal, Plam said.
To get around this, Plam said to look into Wi-Fi extenders, basically support routers that one can place strategically around the house to pick up and boost the signal of the main router. “All the router has to see now is one of the extenders and then it’s sent from there,” he said.
Working a retail night shift these days, Putney Sans says a strong internet connection isn’t a luxury — it’s vital to her mental health at the end of long days.
“When I get home, all I want to do is stream a little TV,” she said.