Poor Wi-Fi costing renters in North America additional $337 a year

In June, 2021, WiredScore commissioned a research survey to determine the importance of connectivity in the home, and to quantify the consequences of poor connectivity.

The research shows that 86 percent of renters across North America face Wi-Fi connectivity issues, equating to around 20 service breakdowns per month. This is despite paying an average of $744 per year for their home internet service. Furthermore, the research shows that affected US and Canadian renters and homeowners are forced to use on average 3.5GB of extra mobile data each month to compensate for their poor Wi-Fi – the additional cost of this totals $337 over the course of the year*.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for seamless connectivity in the home. These “down times” now have severe effects on multiple areas of our lives – from our health and wellbeing to our work & productivity. The research report gives insights into these varied areas and helps to illustrate just how important connectivity is in the home. The areas identified include:

1. Professional impact

• With the home acting as an extension of the office during the pandemic, business executives surveyed estimated that 77 percent of their company’s productivity relies on employees being able to reliably connect to the internet.

2. Social impact

• The cost of not having reliable, high-speed internet access goes beyond impacting work activities. Three-quarters of respondents acknowledged that high quality internet access has been crucial for them during the pandemic to support their physical and mental health and social ties.

3. Education impact

• Parents also relied on high-quality internet to keep their children in school through remote learning. For many families, this has come with significant challenges. A staggering four in ten children (38 percent) experienced remote learning disruption due to internet access issues.

This research report shows that there is a clear need for renters and homeowners to have access to high quality internet. Wi-Fi is now an expected utility when looking for a new property, according to four in five respondents (84 percent) who expect this to work like any other utility. It’s not surprising then that 82 percent of renters think building developers should strongly consider Wi-Fi connectivity throughout the construction process of a property. In fact, half (48 percent) say that if they knew their property had poor connectivity they wouldn’t have moved in.

Download the full report here.