Yes, Wi-Fi dead spots can be fixed. I diagnose weak or dropping Wi-Fi in homes and small businesses across Bolton, reposition or replace routers and access points, and set up mesh or extender systems so the coverage reaches the whole building, including loft conversions, garden offices and outbuildings. I measure the coverage before recommending anything, so you buy the right thing once instead of the wrong thing twice.
Almost nobody chose where their router lives. It sits where the master socket happens to be, which is usually a hallway or the corner of a front room, at floor level, behind a television or inside a cupboard. From there it is expected to cover the whole house. In a small modern flat it manages. In most Bolton housing stock it does not.
Wi-Fi is radio, and buildings eat it. The stone terraces around Horwich and Smithills, the solid Victorian walls and chimney breasts in Heaton, the foil-backed insulation and metal-stud plasterboard in newer estates around Middlebrook: all of them absorb or reflect the signal. Add distance, a converted loft, an extension, or a garden office at the bottom of a long plot, and the signal that arrives is a fraction of what left the router.
Then there is the router itself. Providers hand out a box that is adequate on day one and increasingly not, as the number of devices in the average house has gone from a handful to thirty-odd. And there is device behaviour: phones and laptops cling to a weak signal from the router they first connected to rather than switching to the stronger one nearby, which is exactly why adding a cheap extender so often makes things feel worse rather than better.
The useful part is that most of this is fixable, and often cheaply. It is a coverage problem, not a broadband problem, and it does not need a new provider or a faster package.
A wired test at the router shows what the line is genuinely delivering. That single number decides everything else: if the line is fine, this is a coverage job. If it is not, you need to know that before spending anything on hardware, and I will say so.
Signal and real throughput checked room by room, at the desk, in the loft conversion, in the garden office, wherever the complaint actually is. This is what separates a fix from a guess, and it regularly shows the problem is one wall rather than the whole house.
Congested channels from neighbouring networks, an old router running out of capacity, devices stuck on the 2.4GHz band, a powerline adapter quietly failing. Often one of these is doing most of the damage and costs nothing to correct.
Reposition first, reconfigure second, replace third, extend fourth. Plenty of houses are sorted by moving the router and correcting settings. Where kit is genuinely needed, you get told what and why, and the cost, before anything is bought.
The same rooms retested, devices moved onto the right band and network, and a note of what changed. If the reason you called was calls dropping in the box room, we test the box room.
The honest version, including when the cheapest option is the right one.
Out of the cupboard, off the floor, away from the TV, and as central as the socket allows. Free, and it fixes more houses than people expect.
Best for: small houses and flats
Two or three units, one network name, devices handed over properly as you move. The right answer for most three-storey terraces and larger detached houses, and better still if one hop is wired.
Best for: whole-house coverage
A cable or point-to-point link out to the room or building that matters, with an access point at the far end. The only thing that reliably works for garden offices, annexes and outbuildings.
Best for: garden offices and outbuildings
A basic extender repeats the signal on the same radio, which roughly halves the bandwidth, and it usually creates a second network your devices refuse to let go of at the wrong moment. That is why so many people end up with an extender plugged in and a house that feels worse than before. Sometimes one is genuinely the right call. Often it is the thing I remove.
Where a building already has access points, the job is usually one of three things: one has failed and needs replacing, the coverage has never been right and another is needed, or the kit is old enough that it is now the bottleneck for every device connected to it.
That applies to homes with wired points in a loft or extension, and to small business premises, shops, salons, workshops and offices, where it also means keeping a guest network properly separated from the one your own systems and card machine sit on. Replacements are matched to the building and to what is already there, configured, positioned and tested, not simply swapped like for like if like for like was the problem in the first place.
Business networks with staff, shared files and several sites are covered in more detail on the IT support for small businesses page.
Two floors and an insulated ceiling between the router and the room, usually the one someone now works or games in.
An external wall, a stretch of garden and another wall. Signal that technically arrives and practically will not hold a video call.
Narrow, tall, and built solid. The signal dies going up rather than across, so the top floor gets almost nothing.
Wide footprints, foil-backed insulation and metal-stud walls. Open plan looks like it should help and frequently does not.
Barns, converted stables and separate buildings out towards Rivington and the moor edge, where an extender in a window was never going to do it.
A setup that was fine for evening streaming and is now carrying your job between nine and five, in the furthest room in the house.
If you want the background first, there is a guide on why your wi-fi keeps dropping with the things worth trying yourself before anyone charges you for a visit.
Yes. That means diagnosing weak or dropping Wi-Fi properly rather than guessing, repositioning or replacing routers and access points, and setting up mesh or extender systems so the coverage reaches the whole house, including loft conversions and garden offices.
Because Wi-Fi is a radio signal and your house is full of things that stop it. Solid stone and brick walls, chimney breasts, foil-backed insulation, plasterboard with metal studs, mirrors and even large fish tanks all absorb or reflect it. A single router sitting wherever the broadband engineer left it has to push through all of that. The speed into the property can be excellent and still not arrive in the back bedroom.
They are different things and it is worth knowing which one you are fighting. Test on a device plugged in by cable next to the router: if that is fast, the line is fine and the problem is coverage, which is fixable without changing provider. If the wired test is slow too, it is the line, and I will tell you that rather than sell you hardware that will not help.
It depends on the house. A cheap extender halves the bandwidth and creates a second network your devices cling to at the wrong moment, which is why they so often make things feel worse. A mesh system keeps one network name and hands devices over properly. In a small flat a repositioned router is often enough. In a three-storey terrace or a large detached house, mesh, ideally with one hop wired, is usually the right answer. I will tell you which one your house needs and it is sometimes the cheapest option.
Yes, and it is worth doing properly. An extender pointed at a window rarely survives the weather or the distance. A wired or point-to-point link out to the building with an access point at the far end gives a real connection that stays up. That is the difference between working out there and pretending to.
Yes. Access points that have failed, aged out or were never right for the building get replaced, and new ones get installed and configured where coverage needs extending. That applies to homes and to small business premises, shops, offices, salons and workshops, including guest networks kept separate from the business side.
Wi-Fi coverage is one of the few things that genuinely needs someone in the building, because it has to be measured where you actually use it. Settings, router configuration and device problems can often be sorted the same day remotely, and I will do that where it will fix it.
Most homes are a single visit. I check the coverage, agree what is needed, and tell you the cost before anything is bought or fitted, so there are no surprises. If a five-minute change fixes it, I will say so rather than finding work.
Bolton and its neighbourhoods, and the towns and villages around it.
Everything else I help with is on the tech support in Bolton page.
That one detail, plus roughly what the house is like, is usually enough for me to tell you what is probably going on and what it would take to fix, before you commit to anything.