There was a study in the US last year that reported 75% of people saying they’d be grumpier during a week without Wi-Fi than they would during a week without coffee. Ok, so it’s the US, but even still I know how attached to coffee most of my family and friends are, and what my own coffee-withdrawal symptoms have historically been.

It’s just another reminder, as if we needed it, of how important the internet is, and why it’s worth taking the time - and, let’s face it, the money - to do it properly. Here are some primers on what we think about when doing that:

• It’s been a long time since wifi was the thing you had in the main room. People need it everywhere (yes, even - especially - on the loo).

• So we need to get wifi signal in most rooms.

• You want to be able to wander around and stay on wifi, not have to join the ‘kitchen wifi’ as you move to the kitchen, or join the ‘living room wifi’ as you move to the living room.

• when you do move from room to room, you don’t want to drop your call. For reference, if you’re moving around the house and you’re on a call, the system has about 200 milliseconds to move you around your wifi before the call is likely to drop. There’s a lot that’s got to happen to keep you connected! (And did you know many telephone calls made at home use your wifi to start with, before becoming a cellular call somewhere else in the UK’s network?)

• Many internet providers say they offer wifi in every room. Caveat emptor, read the small print. Usually you’ll see ‘guaranteed minimum wifi speed of 2mbps’. Which is a trickle. A decent video stream needs 10-25mbps, and with more than half UK households with a streaming service, this just won’t cut it.

• You need good wires to do good wifi. That’s why internet providers have that paltry minimum speed guarantee - the ‘wifi everywhere’ system they’re plugging (excuse the pun) doesn’t use wires. For each box you add without a wire, you halve your available speed.

Solving these means investing in a good infrastructure (wires!) design; and investing in a high-performing, highly-reliable wifi system. We recognise this costs more - often, quite a lot more than the high street - but we promise that, once it’s installed, you’ll forget about it for years. 

As a bonus, you usually need fewer boxes around the home (we once took out 17 boxes to be replaced by just 4), we know we won’t get a phone call from you asking why the wifi doesn’t work, and you can forget about it.

While we’re here, did you know that almost half the over 65s now use internet banking? About a fifth of the 65+ make appointments with the doc online? Whisper it, we’re all getting old. Or we’ve taught our parents a thing or two. Or both.