A good internet connection has never been more important than during the Coronavirus pandemic. With so many people working from home, the standard of connectivity in households was often the primary factor in how successful a work day could be.
For Matt and Karen Phelps in Norfolk, this could not be more true. They are both teachers who had to resort to online teaching when lockdown was introduced in 2020 and 2021.
Teaching became practically impossible because their internet connection was constantly cutting out during lessons and the average speeds they were seeing were around just 0.5 Mbps. To be able to work effectively, they were forced to leave their home and look for communal areas with internet connectivity just to do their jobs.
The Challenge:
The Master Distributor of SimRush, FreeClix, were asked to install a system that would enable the teachers to teach effectively from home.
The solution needed to be able to overcome the property’s thick walls which obstructed wireless coverage making it difficult to get WiFi in all areas of the property. The solution also needed to be able to pick up signal in a weak 4G coverage area where the nearest 4G cell mast is a long distance away.
The Solution:
To ensure a good signal was achieved, FreeClix installed a standard SimRush One unit with a long-range antenna and raised the antenna to the highest point possible above the chimney. The increased sensitivity of the long-range antenna enabled us to get a good signal for the property even in a weak 4G coverage area.
To prevent the thick walls from obstructing wireless coverage, powerline adaptors were used between the room which housed the router and the customer’s home office, to boost the WiFi signal in this area.
This was necessary as the office was in the extended part of the house, which was quite a distance from where the router sits. Unlike with their original BT broadband, FreeClix were able to extend the wireless coverage around the property to ensure they had excellent WiFi in all areas.
The Result:
The SimRush solution achieved 35 Mbps download speeds for the customer. This is a huge improvement from the 0.5 Mbps they were previously seeing from their BT set up.
This massive step up in quality of service enabled the customers to use the online video software in their home office, which they were unable to run prior to the SimRush installation. They are now able to teach online classes from the comfort of their own home, without the stress of constant interruptions and buffering.
Here’s what they had to say:
“When lockdown struck in March 2020 it immediately highlighted a problem with working from home. We are both teachers and our attempts to teach remotely using Teams or its equivalent proved impossible due to slow broadband. Our children had to stop what they were doing in order to try and make a difference, it didn’t. BT could offer us nothing to help. The SimRush system we had installed by FreeClix fixed the problem.
Now we can have 5 people using a variety of remote learning systems without complications. We were unable to watch Iplayer or Netflix without constant buffering. That is no longer a problem.
We no longer have to think about Broadband because it simply works.”
Karen & Matt Phelps, Oulton, Norfolk
