A common theme of questioning that our team of Wi-Fi experts often get asked is around Wi-Fi connectivity for startup offices, so we thought we’d jot down some of our thoughts for anyone in a similar position.

We have a wealth of experience working with all sorts of businesses and organisations, from huge outdoor festivals, to startup business offices, all with one thing in common – Getting connected.

This blog covers some things to bear in mind when you’re setting your Wi-Fi up. Although, the easiest thing to do would be to give us experts a call! But then we would say that wouldn’t we… So here you go, all things Wi-Fi for getting your new office online.

Factors to Consider

User base and usage patterns
– What’s your number of users?
– Do you use Google Drive / Dropbox? If you have a big user base and use these heavily you’ll need more upstream bandwidth.
– How many devices are going to connect? (Laptops, mobile phones, printers, local servers). If you have many users, all with multiple devices, you’ll need a more powerful router that can handle the amount of devices.
– Do you have employees that work remotely? Do they have to connect via VPN to access local files? This will require more upstream bandwidth, a proper router and might also require a fixed IP address.

Do you need a fixed IP address?
This isn’t usually necessary, apart from the case described above.

Outages and Failover
Basically, how fundamental is the Wi-Fi connection for your office to keep ‘business-as-usual’? If the internet was to go down, would you need an alternative connection? If your router failed, do you have a plan to put in place where you could quickly replace it?

If your business is largely online, or in tech, the internet going down is going to mean that most of your employees cannot carry on with their work. This would support an argument for investing money in a reliable Wi-Fi setup – Get good, reliable hardware and two internet connections instead of just one.

Internet Connection Options

You might be wondering if there’s a difference between the internet connection you would use at home and in the office, especially if you have a small business in a startup office. But there is likely a difference in the connection you need, and generally not as simple as a household internet connection.

The main problems you’ll find are:
– End-consumer internet connections usually come with a lot of downstream but very limited upstream.
– There might be volume restrictions which would lead to bandwidth limits. For example, if your bandwidth was limited to 10GB per day, this could be reached within minute in an office with 25+ people.
– If the internet went down, there would likely be no SLA with your provider in terms of when it would be fixed / back online. It’s generally a lot longer for a household connection that a business one.

Business Connections
These type of connections are mainly available from ISPs for office buildings, although a business broadband contract can sometimes also be arranged for businesses that run from home.
They tend to be a bit more expensive, but this is really worth the money as there will be proper SLA’s in place and as much upstream as there is downstream (handy if you use cloud based services to save and share your files).

Router/Hardware options
If you are a small company, then end-consumer hardware is probably okay to use (up to 30-40 devices). Larger companies will need a proper router which can do automatic failover, more expensive but necessary.

If you’re sat reading this blog, chances are you’re in a position where you’re trying to set up Wi-Fi in your office. If you don’t know what some of the jargon means, or are still unsure of what you need, then maybe consider not trying to do it all yourself. If the internet connection is important for your business to run, then we’d really recommend getting a professional to come and get this sorted for you.

Here at Geekabit, our London, Hampshire and Wales based Wi-Fi experts are ready to help design and install the Wi-Fi setup that’s right for you and your business. Wi-Fi isn’t a luxury, it’s an important investment to making sure your business stays online.

What We Do

Get in touch…

London Office – Tel. 0203 322 2443
Cardiff Office – Tel. 02920 676712
Hampshire Office – Tel. 01962 657 390

We’ve just completed installation of a new customised Ubiquiti UniFi setup for a growing chain of coffee shops in Hampshire.

Geekabit was delighted to be selected by nationally recognised Josies, based in Winchester, Bishops Waltham and Petersfield, for the custom installation to start 2019.

Incorporating bespoke social media logins, capturing data for ongoing marketing and analysis, we have built a customised Wi-Fi management portal to support them in achieving their business aims.

Each site has the latest Ubiquiti UniFi AP Pro installed, with the Ubiquiti UniFi Gen2 Cloud Key Controller, linked to our own AWS-hosted cloud portal. This also allows us to know almost instantly when a site is offline and customer Wi-Fi access has been disrupted, as well as providing live data and feedback remotely for each site.

Steve Cross, Geekabit CEO, comments: “As specialists installing Ubiquiti Wi-Fi products in London, Wales and Hampshire, we’ve been pleased to be working with yet another successful and growing organisation who want to provide a superior Wi-Fi service for their customers”.

You can visit Josies and find out more at: https://www.josieswinecoffee.com/

Whether you want it, or do genuinely need it, there are definitely Wi-Fi options out there for you and your car.

There’s a lot of chatter at the moment about 5G and whether or not it will replace WiFi. Obviously it’s in our interest to be asking, once you get access to wireless connectivity that is faster, more robust, and has greater capacity than Wi-Fi, why would you need that and Wi-Fi? Why wouldn’t 5G replace Wi-Fi? Over the last couple of years people have been asking this question again and again, because theoretically it is possible.

EDN asked a Wi-Fi industry specialist about 5G replacing Wi-Fi, and at first they didn’t even understand the question. The reason for the confusion became clear after a bit of discussion. Simply, it makes no sense. For 5G to replace Wi-Fi, the wireless carriers would have to want to make it happen, and obviously they have no reason to want it to happen.

Wi-Fi is most widely used for the residential market, distributing broadband bandwidth among a growing number of devices. Of course there are public hotspots and other things that rely on Wi-Fi too but residential service is where Wi-Fi is used most.

Logically, there are many reasons why homes will continue to rely on Wi-Fi.

We already use thousands of products where Wi-Fi is already built in, and there are thousands more coming. All the tech that we currently use, like tablets for example, have nothing but Wi-Fi and so need to be supported for a long time yet. Maybe some people will decide to get 5G broadband,  but the signal is more likely going to go to a gateway and get distributed via Wi-Fi from there.

Even if, for whatever reasons, carriers decided to replace Wi-Fi, it would not be an immediate thing. There are 90 million to 100 million homes that would require femtocells. So even if consumers demanded it, or operators wanted to do it, it would take years to deploy that many devices. Also, consumers wouldn’t replace all of their tech straight away, and would continue using legacy devices, so even if things were to turn towards 5G, it would still have to co-exist with Wi-Fi for many years after that.

There is also no compelling technological reason to replace Wi-Fi anyway. Technology is always improving and subsequently getting faster, more robust, and capable of supporting an increasing number of Wi-Fi devices simultaneously. Repeaters are becoming more common and mesh networking is also on the way in the forthcoming IEEE 802.11ax generation of Wi-Fi technology, which is being branded as Max Wi-Fi.

5G signals are a shared resource. If you have a hundred homes served by a single base station, that 1 Gbps gets distributed, averaging out to 10 Mbps to each home. But if people want gigabit service, they want a full gigabit, and that service is still best provided by cable or DSL which will get distributed throughout the home by Wi-Fi.

Those conditions likewise apply in the enterprise market, which is unlikely to give up Wi-Fi any time soon. Urban access, in areas served by public hotspots can do this with LTE now (a 4G telecommunication standard).

In simple terms, if Wi-Fi was going to be replaced in urban environments, then it would be happening already. If it’s not happening for LTE then it’s unlikely it’ll happen for 5G.

The only place where 5G might possibly end up getting used instead of Wi-Fi would be where wireline connectivity is lacking or inadequate in rural areas, but even this is purely speculative. In most experts minds, 5G will never replace Wi-Fi.

There are 3 challenges that Wi-Fi equipment developers are in the process of overcoming: more devices in more places, most requiring greater speed, with some requiring significantly lower latency.

For example, the Amazon or Google home devices that are becoming more prevalent need to be answering consumers questions in well under a second.

According to the experts, 802.11ax will address all three issues. It will be faster, and will support mesh networking. It will also support more channels to handle more devices concurrently. Max Wi-Fi will adopt the OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access) modulation scheme to support traffic scheduling, which will be kind of handy in residential environments but immensely valuable in situations where thousands of users are packed together, arenas and stadiums, for example. There are also provisions for spatial reuse.

Work is always being done to improve Wi-Fi to complement other connectivity options that include 5G. There are several local and personal area network (LAN, PAN) communications options, and they will have to be made to work with each other.

Wi-Fi operates in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels, but Bluetooth 5, Zigbee, and Thread – three low-power technologies – are all operating in the same 2.4 GHz band. Wi-Fi is more powerful and can overwhelm the others, but they’re going to have to co-exist. (By the way, Max Wi-Fi has a low-power profile as well, and might end up competing with the other three in some applications).

We are seeing gateways specified with all four radios: Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Thread, and Bluetooth. It’s up to infrastructure companies to sort out the coexistence issues.

So 5G versus Wi-Fi? It doesn’t have to be a competition; they will very much be co-exising with each other.

https://www.edn.com/aboutus

Christmas is creeping closer and all the festivities bring thoughts of the year coming to a close and what 2018 has brought us.

It seems customary at this time of year to do some kind of ‘top 10’ so we thought we’d join the party and do a little round up of our top 10 blogs from the year – What got the most hits and what did you readers find the most intriguing in the world of Wi-Fi this past year?

#10

In at number ten, and by no means least interesting, is Alexa and how her simple Wi-Fi set-up could stop you forgetting to lock the door, turn off lights that you always leave on, and generally run your life for you.
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/09/26/remember-lock-door-one-simple-wi-fi-set-alexa-run-life/

#9

Next up is how ‘High-Tech Stickers Turn Anything into Smart Device’. This one got quite a few of you talking, and what’s not to like? Imagine having something as simple as a sticker, and being able to stick it to anything in your home to make it into a smart device, something you can control with the touch of a button through a Wi-Fi connected device? So many exciting possibilities!
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/10/24/high-tech-stickers-turn-anything-smart-device/

#8

Not far ahead was how good old Wi-Fi could help detect weapons and bombs. A relatively and simple and cost effective approach to security, and not surprising that this topic was a popular one in today’s climate.
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/09/19/basic-wi-fi-help-detection-weapons-bombs/

#7

In at lucky number 7 was ‘7 Wi-Fi Performance Challenges in Hospitals’. Hospitals are one of those places where Wi-Fi is used for a whole host of different things. The importance of reliable wireless connections is paramount to the running of hospital practices but there are challenges that stand in it’s way.
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/09/10/7-wi-fi-performance-challenges-hospitals/

#6

Narrowly missing the top 5, this blog celebrated the efforts of a small Welsh village who went to extreme lengths to improve their Wi-Fi speed. This community pulled together and dug a 15 mile trench so that they could get the super-fast wireless connection they so desperately needed. We love a story like this, and so did you!
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/08/21/lengths-go-improve-wi-fi-speed/

#5

Should venues provide free Wi-Fi? Apparently that’s one of the burning questions from this year, and this blog with a dialogue of arguments both for and against was one of our top reads of 2018 making it into the top 5.
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/08/07/should-wi/

#4

Nothing quite like a sex symbol to draw people’s attention and Hedy Lamarr did it again with this one. The co-inventor of Wi-Fi was also a beautiful Hollywood star – Very much the brains and the beauty.
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/09/01/know-1940s-sex-symbol-invented-wi-fi/

#3 and #2

A huge hit from this year was our series of blogs on Ubiquiti UniFi. In particular Part 1 and Part 2 which focused on how it could help your business and the brains behind the whole thing.
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/10/03/ubiquiti-unifi-help-business-part-1/
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/10/10/part-2-ubiquiti-unifi-brains/

#1

And finally, the time has come; the most popular article we shared in 2018 was the disadvantages of wireless repeaters. And by quite a long way! It seems you know what you like, and what you like is technical information about Wi-Fi and how to get it working to the best of it’s ability in your homes and businesses.
https://geekabit.co.uk/2018/01/21/wireless-repeaters-the-disadvantages/

We’ve rather enjoyed taking a look back at what’s made Wi-Fi news this past year – From the likes of sex symbols like Hedy Lamarr, to home systems like Alexa, the top technical stuff like the benefits of Ubiquiti UniFi, how Wi-Fi could help security systems and even the unbreakable community spirit of a small Welsh village who just wanted super-fast internet.

We’re looking forward to what 2019 will bring!

As it’s nearly Christmas we thought we’d round up our favourite festive Wi-Fi cards – Perfect for the internet geek in your life!

#1 – This little gem of a card is funny because it’s true! 

https://www.notonthehighstreet.com/doyoupunctuate/product/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-the-wifi-password-card?istCompanyId=aa76f5e6-d733-4e56-8409-574cea196cc9&istItemId=xmxqqttimp&istBid=t&DGMKT=FID__TID_pla-344707128621_PID_640383&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3_bq2-CV3wIVh7TtCh0p5QQpEAQYBSABEgIl0vD_BwE

#2 – Taking the millennials standard questioning when looking for a room for the night and transcending it back to Mary and Joseph themselves. 

https://www.zazzle.co.uk/funny_christmas_card_does_it_have_wi_fi_holiday_card-137472725514685119

#3 – Because who doesn’t wish this for people? 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/479690647/funny-christmas-cards-funny-holiday

#4 – A wise man and a shepherd doing it for the ‘gram.

https://www.johnlewis.com/woodmansterne-wifi-password-christmas-card/p3673318?sku=237644553&s_kwcid=2dx92700036666466072&tmad=c&tmcampid=2&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0f7t8uKV3wIV573tCh12UgvNEAYYASABEgLtmvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

#5 – Where would we be without Wi-Fi and non-buffering viewing of our favourite festive shows, with a belly full of turkey and Christmas pudding.

I’m Dreaming of a Wifi Christmas

#6 – Okay okay, so it’s not a card, but it got us at ‘Signals Greetings’. And could quite easily be a stocking filler for the Wi-Fi expert in your life.

https://www.cafepress.com/mf/89512621/signals-greetings_mugs

#7 – More for the coding extraordinaire than the internet geek this one, but it made us chuckle. 

zazzle.co.uk

#8 – We’ve reached number 8 of our top picks… Has your Christmas cheer almost loaded?

https://www.cafepress.com/mf/94005897/greeting-cards-pk-of-20_greeting-cards?productId=1676849500

#9 – Not a card per se, but this came up a lot in our search for Christmassy Wi-Fi greetings cards! Do you have a sign in your home with your Wi-Fi password on it? We’re not saying this is a brilliant idea… Maybe one for the guest bedroom?

www. huntandhost.net/lifestyle/

#10 – And last but not least… One for the Scrooges of the Wi-Fi world. Bah Humbug! 

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/641096726/christmas-family-svg?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=wifi+christmas+card&ref=sr_gallery-1-6

If you’re a small business not currently offering customers Wi-Fi then there might be some reasons standing in your way – Reasons that may actually be myths stopping you from connecting with your customers.

Do you think that it will be too costly, or too technical to run? These are just 2 of the reasons research found that stopped small business owners offering Wi-Fi, even though 3 out of 5 said they were planning to or considering it.

Of course, you’re warranted to feel hesitant, but here are 5 myths that could be standing in your way unneccessarily.

MYTH #1: We’re only a small business – There will be too much technical support required

This may have been true when Wi-Fi first came on the market – many technologies are pricey when they first begin, especially purchasing the equipment required. It also all seemed a lot more tricky to use. But it’s been around a while now, most people know the basics and it’s a lot simpler to get online than ever before. You don’t need to be particularly technologically savvy to get connected!

Most equipment is set up with wizards that guide you through the entire installation process. Quite literally – It’s plug and play!

If you’re still not confident in getting it set up yourself, then there are companies that can do this for you. Here at Geekabit we can take you from the planning stages through to installation, and then be that port of call if you were to need some fault-finding and fix any issues.

MYTH #2: Employees will be too easily distracted

Perhaps you think that as soon as there is Wi-Fi available, your employees will sit scrolling rather than working. But the opposite may actually be true, and they become more productive!

Wi-Fi is a convenience and a very useful tool – Employees can find information easier should they need to and thus perform their jobs better. There is often a business network available anyway, or they’ll have 3G or 4G on their smartphones so Wi-Fi wouldn’t be adding any additional distractions.

If you are still worried about productivity then you could prevent potential distractions by introducing rules such as no mobile phones during work hours.

MYTH #3: It’s too expensive to offer Wi-Fi

As with most things, price has tended to fluctuate. As we said earlier, the technical Wi-Fi equipment started off very expensive but has come down in price. Devices have pretty much halved in price!

It’s also possible to rent the devices required to offer private and public Wi-Fi hotspots.

Believing that offering Wi-Fi will be too expensive does seem to be the biggest perceived obstacle for small businesses, despite them wanting to offer the service.

Give us a call and one of our Wi-Fi experts can advise on what Wi-Fi options we can offer for you and your business – We operate out of London, Winchester and Cardiff. It’s much more affordable than you probably think. And the returns from enticing new customers could make it more than worth it!

Wi-Fi has been found to draw in customers and increase sales and repeat business. In particular, food and beverage businesses find higher sales per customer rates when they offer Wi-Fi.

On the bad side, it might actually go so far as to put customers off by not offering Wi-Fi.

MYTH 4: Customer misuse

Small business owners have previously been warned that offering internet access comes with a security risk.

What if customers engage in unlawful activities online using your internet?

There are however security measures that you can put in place. If you use an encryption service and place a password on your Wi-Fi network, then you can make sure that it is only shared with paying customers.

You could also limit the type of websites that customers can visit by blocking them for example, maybe you don’t want customers or employees to access gambling websites in your establishment, so you could block these.

MYTH #5: If I offer Wi-Fi, customers will loiter and block new business

Customers may well loiter if there is Wi-Fi available, but generally they are polite about it and tend to order something for the duration that they are there. They came in for a quick coffee, but got caught up in work emails, so they end up ordering another drink and a sandwich to tide them through lunch.

On the flip side, it may also depend on peak times. If it’s not a busy period, then customers may be more likely to linger but then when it starts to fill up with people, they’ll give up their table and be on there way,

Research has shown that there is a belief that by offering Wi-Fi, you will be encouraging customers to loiter and block areas of the business.

However, it would seem that actually the opposite is true, and that you could see increased sales.

And what about a doctor’s waiting room? No disrespect meant to the NHS as they do an amazing job, but how often do you go to the doctors and actually see the doctor at the right time? How often do you overhear a patient complaining at reception that they’ve been waiting 20 minutes and when will it be their turn? Offering Wi-Fi in this scenario could provide a perfect distraction to those kept waiting and even have an advantage over a GP surgery without that service. It could even encourage people to turn up in plenty of time for their appointment, as they know they’ll be able to stay in contact with the office or have a scroll through Instagram while they are waiting.

So there you go. 5 myths that could be standing in the way of your small business providing Wi-Fi!

Most importantly, offering this service seems to be a statement of professionalism – that you are up to date with technology and you want your customers to be happy.

To discuss how Geekabit could get your business online and keep your customers connected, give us a call on the numbers below and one of our Wi-Fi experts will be in touch with you.

Winchester – Tel. 01962 657 390

London – Tel. 0203 322 2443

Cardiff – Tel. 02920 676712