We wondered through the streets of Soho on Friday night deep in the middle of the famous London powercut of Black Friday 2016.

Meandering through familiar streets, restaurants and bars lit purely by candlelight, people spilling out over pavements and talking with strangers who had only just met each other – it was quite a sight.

But it also caused a massive spike in the use of mobile data networks, perhaps people all wanting to tweet the news of the lack of juice in the lamp-posts? More likely, suddenly users realised they weren’t connected to their local, regular Wi-Fi networks in their pubs, offices and neighbourhoods.

Have you considered what happens to your users when the power goes out? How important is access to your internet connection both wired and wireless? Can your support or customer service department afford to have the downtime?

These are all questions we ask when planning new Wi-Fi network installations in London, Cardiff and Hampshire, helping our users to understand the resilience of their networks and which bits are truly vital for 24hr a day operation.

For a business of any size, it is worth considering where you need to ensure the power never goes out, and additionally where it would be quite nice to be disconnected for a few hours.

If you live in an area saturated in Wi-Fi signals being broadcast from a multitude of different homes and businesses, it’s really interesting to note how modern day, smart access points start to react.

You’ll suddenly see your fast Wi-Fi slow right down, with pages, video and imagery taking ages to load, when only half an hour before it was running smoothly and quickly. Welcome to the world of interference.

When focussing specifically at the crowded 2.4GHz space, you’ll notice that access points (such as your BT Broadband router) will frequently change the channel it is working on, several times an hour, fighting to find the quietest channel to operate on.

These changes don’t happen very quickly, and you’ll begin to notice a lag in the internet speed. Your access point/router is re-configuring itself. Lucky thing, but what about you and your users?
Fixing your channel manually to the quietest and less crowded channel is the best solution. Very few times do automated setups for Wi-Fi products make the most sense. In this instance, automatic is not smartest!

If every other business or home in the local area uses the same or similar product, then there’s a high chance that every access point is playing this game, jumping around all over the place fighting for the same space. It’s a game that will never end.

Maybe work together with your neighbours, bring down the power of each broadcast signal so it doesn’t bleed across properties and offices, and choose fixed channels to begin to give everyone a better experience of Wi-Fi.

Interference doesn’t need to be an issue with a little smart setup of your products and working together for a better future.

If you need assistance in your business in London, Cardiff or Hampshire, our team of Wi-Fi Experts at Geekabit will be delighted to work with you to find the solution.

When we mention what our team does, although “Fixing and Installing Wi-Fi” sounds pretty geeky, you’ll soon find that a small crowd forms around us. Literally everywhere.

Wherever we go and whoever we see, everyone at some point has an issue with Wi-Fi. It’s now almost (or should be) ubiquitous in society, and yet there are so many people who have issues, without understanding at all what is going on.

Often the fixes are relatively simple and today’s big “calamity” can be easily resolved with a brief visit.

What gets our teams in Hampshire, London and Cardiff really turned on though is not the knowledge or the skill of understanding the issue, but getting down on the ground at one of our clients, setting to work measuring and reading all the different environments that are going on.

It really, really excites us. We will go above and beyond to make sure we find out what is going on, and spend a huge amount of time on roofs, up ladders, out in the rain, digging up fields and running up and down stairs, just to make sure that simple thing works seamlessly “connecting to Wi-Fi”.

And our business growing, due to our passions. We’ve opened offices in London and Cardiff after starting in Hampshire a few years ago, and we’re proud to be specialists.

We know that when people call, they have a real need. And we have a huge passion to solve that.

We’ve spent the last week out and about, luckily enjoying the sunshine and making a difference to the connectivity of our clients.

What has completely surprised us is how many of our clients have in-house or contracted external IT support, yet these organisations aren’t prepared to create, design and install temporary or permanent Wi-Fi connectivity solutions outdoors.

Our work continues to increase in this sector – on the roofs, on top of portacabins and digging holes through fields – and its probably one of the most rewarding parts of our activity.

From our offices in London, Hampshire and Cardiff, we are able to hire out for a day, week or longer period, or sell permanently, a wide range of solutions that enable a complete IT network in a field.

Whether you need to get a point to point connection to an outlying barn, increase the network connectivity between buildings, or setup festival offices that can take advantage of every cloud app going through the power of satellite internet, we are quite prepared to get “down and dirty” in order to keep our clients happy.

Our IT installation services now include such technically challenging items such as spades, duct tape and steel toe capped boots, and we’re in the process of completing all the health and safety qualifications to ensure we can provide you with the best temporary internet and Wi-Fi solutions.

Plus we love a bit of mud.

We’ve worked with one of the biggest festivals in the world to ensure that each year they have fast and reliable Wi-Fi for their stages, fed from a dedicated and secure network. We have that particular challenge nailed so feel that we can say with absolute confidence that the Geekabit Wi-Fi team can help you take the internet to any event you are planning.

Are you a university planning a research project or dig that might take you into the wild Welsh moors for a fortnight? Don’t rely on 4G; why not see if Geekabit could help you out. We would love the chance to get our teeth into providing Wi-Fi at some more challenging locations.

Holding a party in a marquee next to a polo pitch in the posh part of Surrey? Make sure your guests can share every moment on their favourite social networks (without using up their data allowance for the next year) and let Geekabit install a temporary network.

Managing a three-day conference showcasing some incredible new computer software or sharing HD sales videos? Don’t be like the poor organiser of an EU ‘Digital Focus’ conference in Italy where the I.T. tech went on strike, leaving the unimpressed delegates with no internet at all… Geekabit will ensure you have fast reliable Wi-Fi to showcase products and impress your delegates.

So, in summary – we work anywhere. We can bring the internet to a field in Hampshire, a rooftop in London or a conference hall in Cardiff. Fast, reliable and secure Wi-Fi internet. Just pick up the phone and tell us what you need.

We were very interested to read Rotten Wi-Fi’s blog about the best airports in the world for Wi-Fi. It’s long been one of the Geekabit team’s biggest gripes when travelling: being stuck in a terminal building waiting for a flight, or worse waiting hours for a connecting flight, and the wireless network is sooo slow you could have found whatever you were after in a giant encyclopaedia. The sheer dismay when you have to engage with fellow travellers in order to stave off going crackers from sheer boredom can also put a downer on any Geek’s holiday!

Anyway, back to the all-important survey – out of the 185 airports worldwide that were assessed, the Rotten Wi-Fi team ranked Don Mueang Airport in Thailand as the best. The American airport of Bill and Hilary Clinton (yes, that is the official name) in Little Rock, Arkansas came in second place. Four other Thai airports made the top 10, proof that Thailand seems willing and able to provide Wi-Fi to waiting travellers better than any other country. 3 European airports made the top 20 list – Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport in Estonia, and Munich and Frankfurt in Germany.

Gatwick and Heathrow are nowhere to be seen, with no British airports making the top 20 list, so perhaps it’s time to start asking for some better wireless services in our major hubs. People have come to expect a quality Wi-Fi service, particularly when they are spending money to be there, and profits from airports certainly seem large enough to get a Wi-Fi project under way. It’s nearly holiday season here at Geekabit HQ and we’ll report back on our airport Wi-Fi experiences, once we have all returned from overseas jaunts.