£55

Wi-Fi and router setup in Staines

Wi-Fi problems are almost always problems of coverage and placement rather than of equipment. The router sits where the engineer found a socket, which is usually the hallway, and the far end of the house has been paying for that decision ever since.

This is an on-site job by definition — the whole point is measuring the signal where it is actually used. Most homes are sorted within a single visit.

The usual complaints

Every house has its own version of this, but the shape is consistent:

  • One room — usually a bedroom or a garden office — where nothing holds a connection
  • Video calls that break up in one particular chair
  • The connection dropping every evening at around the same time
  • A camera, doorbell or thermostat that keeps falling off the network
  • Fast broadband on paper, nothing like it on the devices
  • A new mesh system that has not made the difference it was supposed to

Measuring before buying anything

Signal strength is checked in the rooms that matter, along with which channels the neighbours are sitting on and whether devices are connecting on the band you would want them on. That usually identifies the problem in a few minutes, and it frequently turns out to be free to fix — moving the router off the floor, out of a cupboard, or away from the boiler changes more than most people expect.

Mesh, extenders, or a cable

A cheap extender halves the bandwidth of everything connected through it and is often worse than the gap it was bought to fill. A mesh system genuinely works, but only with the nodes placed properly. And where a run of cable is possible — to a garden office, a loft conversion or a TV — it beats both for a fraction of the cost. You get told which of the three fits the building, rather than which is most expensive.

Everything else that lives on the network

Once the coverage is right the rest follows: printers that print from phones as well as laptops, cameras and doorbells that stay connected, a NAS or shared drive if there is one, guest Wi-Fi kept separate from the main network, and the router admin password changed from the default — which, on a surprising number of routers in daily use, it never has been.

What it costs

Wi-Fi and router setup is £55 on site. The call-out itself is free within Staines and £15 beyond, so Ashford, Sunbury, Shepperton and Egham add a little and nothing else changes. Any hardware that genuinely turns out to be needed is quoted before it is bought — and often none is.

See the full price list