28% of UK People Fear Christmas Demand Might Impact WiFi

A new survey of 2,001 UK adults by Censuswide, which was commissioned by broadband ISP Zen Internet, has found that 28% of respondents are concerned that too many devices using their home WiFi at once over Christmas could impact the reliability of their internet connectivity.

In fairness most home broadband routers these days can usually cope with quite a lot of connected devices. Nevertheless some cheaper kit may struggle but this is perhaps only really a big concern if you have a particularly large family gathering, with many tens of connected devices to consider.

Arguably a bigger risk here may be the lack of adequate broadband connectivity in homes that won’t, or perhaps can’t, upgrade to a faster package. For example, on slower ADSL lines (average downloads of 10Mbps and uploads of 1Mbps), which still account for around a third of UK broadband connections, it doesn’t take much user demand to saturate the downstream and upstream capacity (i.e. turning broadband back to narrowband dialup)

The aforementioned problem is often magnified if several family members try to activate a new internet connected device at the same time. In our experience the first thing that many of these new devices will do is try to download and apply the latest software / firmware updates (on new laptops this could mean multi-GigaByte updates).

In that sense it’s notable from Zen’s survey that 34% of households expect to add another device to their home over Christmas. A further 32% intend to gift new tablets, while just under a third (30%) of consumers will be wrapping up the latest Smartphone for family or friends to enjoy.

The Top Four IoT Devices to be Gifted this Christmas:

Tablets (32%)

Smartphones (30%)

Smart Toys (29%)

Smart Watches (27%)

Zen’s survey also estimates that 41.8 million Brits (63%) will connect with their loved ones over online calls, with 3.9 million (6%) doing so in the bathroom. A similar number of Brits (5%) are also likely to stream their favourite show on Netflix or iPlayer over the festive period there. Meanwhile 11% will duck family festivities for some secret social media scrolling in the bathroom, with 10% also using the bathroom as a safe space to do a spot of online shopping.