A Weak WiFi in HDBs Could Be Caused by Everyday Home Appliances

Last Updated on 2021-09-29 , 2:10 pm

How many of us has experienced this situation before? We pay more than 50 dollars a month for a WiFi signal in the house so weak that you practically have to wait 4 minutes for a webpage to load.

Okay, this might be an exaggeration but often times, we complain of having bad WiFi signal in the house and when we do, our fingers are usually pointed at the service provider.

The poor customer service officers have to listen to us rant and rave on the phone for 5 minutes (if they’re lucky) and get chewed out for something that might not be the service provider’s fault.

Have you ever wondered why your house’s signal is so bad at times you just slam your laptop shut in frustration and decide to use your phone for internet browsing instead?

Well, if you have, here’s the reason why.

What caused it?

According to The Guardian, the main culprit of this phenomenon is called Electromagnetic radiation.

Sounds chim right? Well don’t worry, we don’t know much about it either, but that’s okay, we’ll do it in layman’s term, trust us, it’s as much for our sake as it is for you.

Think of Wi-Fi signal as a wave, and just like waves break past obstacles and arrive at a certain point where its force is significantly weakened, your Wi-Fi signal pretty much faces the same issue.

The kitchen is the worst place to get Wi-Fi signal for good reason, because your microwave oven, refrigerators, toasters, kettles, and water pipes cause interference in the Wi-Fi signal.

In fact, when the microwave oven is switched on, it emits high-powered microwaves at 2.4GHz which is the same frequency as Wi-Fi and creates a black hole around for Wi-Fi signal.

Another factor is that your cordless phone could be placed beside your router. With Singtel now offering internet lines for house phones instead of landlines, most of us tend to place these phones next to the router in the living room.

Because these phones use almost similar frequencies as your Wi-Fi, they’ll cause a big disturbance to your Wi-Fi signal at its source. Basically, anything that has electricity running through it like lights and other devices can emit electromagnetic radiation and can interfere with the Wi-Fi signal in your house.

In addition, if you’re hiding behind too many solid obstacles, the Wi-Fi signal will weaken drastically when it passes through them, e.g. solid walls.

So what can you do to get a stronger signal?

Well, some of the few things you can do to reduce electromagnetic radiation interference would be to change the positioning of your router (away from electronic devices such as TV as possible), place the cordless phones apart from the router, and of course, to switch off as much electric devices as you can if you don’t need them.

As a bonus, it’ll help you save a lot on your electricity bills as well; two birds with one stone, awesome, no?

Finally, with a bonus, we found that we, people, are great at absorbing Wi-Fi. Now you know why it’s practically impossible to get a signal in an extremely crowded space like IT Fairs. It’s not because everyone’s network signals are clashing, but because people keep absorbing your signal before any messages can be sent out.

Featured Image: Casezy idea / Shutterstock.com