Nearly one in 10 adults have to sit in a cupboard to get peace – and decent wi-fi – when WFH

If you’re balancing your laptop whilst sitting on the sofa, think yourself lucky! New research has shown that almost one in 10 people working from home have had to sit in the cupboard to get peace and quiet – and due to the limited range of their current home wi-fi.

A study of 2,000 adults also found 14 per cent of those in London have even had to work from their bathroom to get online during the lockdown.

The findings revealed how adults have had to improvise because of limits to the wi-fi signal in their home and also found more than a third have resorted to rearranging the room decor to make their background look better before going on a video call. And almost one in 10 have used virtual backgrounds on a video call to disguise where they’re working.

The research was commissioned by EE to launch its new Smart WiFi home broadband service, designed to boost the wi-fi coverage in every room of a customer’s home.

The study also revealed that one in three adults have rooms in their house that aren’t covered by their current wi-fi router.

Young adults were most likely to tamper with the router, with more than half of those aged between 18-24 years old moving it around in order to benefit their connection. However, only 23 per cent of those over 55 would bother trying to move the router to improve it. And 18-24-year olds were also the most likely to move items around in the background of their camera view to make their calls look nicer. The same age group were most likely to be working in their bedroom during lockdown – and were most affected by a poor connection due to their limited options of where to work.

Sharon Meadows, director of propositions at EE, said: “With even greater numbers of customers and devices connecting to the internet, Smart WiFi will help eliminate those areas in the home where it’s hard to get coverage and enable customers to make the most out of being connected – whether it’s in a new extension, attic room or even the basement”.

The new Smart WiFi home solution includes a new Smart Router and Smart WiFi Discs, with each disc supporting up to 60 devices so wi-fi not reaching rooms and having to move to be closer to the router will be a thing of the past.