Why is my wifi not working?

There’s a special kind of despair that comes from watching a Teams call freeze on your face mid-sentence, again, while the wifi icon on your laptop smugly shows “full signal.” You’ve restarted the router more times than you’ve restarted your own brain this week, and you’re no closer to an answer…

The good news is that there’s almost always a real, findable reason your wifi isn’t working. And it’s rarely as dramatic as “the internet is broken.” Here’s how to actually find it! Let’s gooo!

The quick answer…

If your wifi’s not working, it’s almost always one of these five things…

1. The router needs a restart
2. Your internet provider is having an outage
3. You’ve got too many devices fighting for one signal
4. Something metal or concrete is blocking the signal between you and the router
5. Or (the one nobody wants to hear) your router simply isn’t built for the space you’re asking it to cover

Try this first, in order…

• Restart the router (properly off at the wall, wait 30 seconds, back on)
• Check whether other devices in the building are also struggling
• Check your provider’s status page for outages
• And move closer to the router to see if it’s a range issue

If all of that checks out and it’s still dropping, keep reading! Because there’s a sixth reason we see constantly in Harlow offices that most “why is my wifi not working” articles won’t tell you!

The five usual suspects, in more detail

1. The router needs an actual restart. Not a quick unplug-replug. Off at the wall, wait a full 30 seconds (to let the memory properly clear), back on, and give it two minutes to fully reconnect before you judge it.

2. Your provider is having a bad day. Check their status page or a site like downdetector.co.uk. If wired devices (anything plugged in directly via ethernet) are also struggling, this is almost certainly your answer. Sadly, no amount of router-fiddling will fix it. Worth flagging if you’re a Harlow business specifically because as of late 2025, only around 28% of the district had full fibre coverage, with Openreach still mid-rollout! If you’re still on an older copper or FTTC line, sluggish or inconsistent speed might be about what’s coming into the building, not your wifi at all.

3. Too many devices, not enough router. Every phone, laptop, smart speaker, and till system on your network is competing for the same bit of airtime. Home routers are typically rated for a handful of devices. Offices routinely have three or four times that once you count everyone’s phone, laptop and whatever’s plugged into the guest network.

4. Physical interference. Concrete, metal filing cabinets and even a busy kitchen with a microwave running can all knock out wifi signal. If one part of the office drops out more than others, that’s usually the tell.

5. The setup wasn’t built for the space, or for how the business has grown. This is the one that catches most businesses out, and it’s rarely obvious. A router that worked fine for six people in a small office doesn’t automatically cope with sixteen people, extra laptops, a VoIP phone system and a card machine a couple of years later. The wifi just quietly stops keeping up, one dropped call at a time, until everyone’s convinced the internet itself is broken.

The sixth reason, and it’s a very Harlow one

Here’s the one most “why is my wifi not working” articles won’t tell you, because it’s basically unique to this town. Harlow is a New Town, built out from 1947 under Frederick Gibberd’s masterplan. And a lot of what went up is solid concrete… Council flats, maisonettes, and plenty of office stock from that era too. The Lawn, over on Momples Road, was Britain’s first residential tower block, built in 1951. Even the Civic Centre is a concrete Gibberd design! Lovely, architecturally significant… aaaand genuinely one of the best building materials going for killing a wifi signal stone dead!

If your office sits in one of the town’s older concrete-built blocks around Templefields, the Pinnacles, or the town centre, that’s not bad luck. That’s physics.

And here’s the properly ironic bit. Harlow has a fair claim to being where fibre optics began! Kao Park, on London Road, sits on the old Nortel Networks laboratories and takes its name from Charles Kao, the physicist who won a Nobel Prize for working out how to send data down glass fibre. So Harlow can genuinely say it helped invent the technology the entire internet now runs on, and plenty of its own businesses still can’t get a reliable signal to the meeting room next door. We didn’t say it made sense. We just fix it!

Why this matters more than it sounds like it should

Wifi problems get written off as a minor annoyance because, individually, a dropped call or a frozen screen isn’t a disaster. But add them up across a working week and a whole team, and it’s a real dent in productivity. Plus a steady drip of frustration nobody logs anywhere. It’s also, more often than businesses expect, a symptom of a network that’s outgrown what it was originally set up to handle. Which tends to show up in wifi first because that’s the bit everyone notices. Even though the same underlying issue can affect security, backups, and how well your systems talk to each other…

If you’ve worked through the quick fixes above and it’s still patchy, the honest next step isn’t a bigger router, it’s proper coverage: the right number of business-grade access points, positioned for your actual floorplan, with critical devices (card machines, VoIP phones) prioritised over general browsing.

And here’s our shameless self plug… Because that’s a job for IT support in Harlow, which is where we can help!

Quick questions we get asked a lot

Why does my wifi keep cutting out at work but not at home? Home networks usually have far fewer devices competing for signal, and offices often have more physical interference (desks, partition walls, filing cabinets) than a typical living room. Business spaces also need equipment actually rated for the number of people and devices using it.

Is it my router or my internet provider? If your wired devices (anything plugged in directly) are also struggling, it’s more likely your provider. If wired connections are fine but wifi specifically is patchy, the problem usually sits with your router or access point setup, not the connection coming into the building.

Do I need a new router or a proper wifi setup? Usually the latter. A single router, however good, can only cover so much space and so many devices. Most businesses that have “wifi problems” actually have a coverage and capacity problem, which is solved with the right number of access points in the right places. Not a bigger box!

How do I know if my business has outgrown its current wifi? If you’ve added more than a handful of staff, devices, or square footage since it was last set up, and dropouts have crept in gradually rather than appeared overnight, that’s usually the sign.

Does Harlow have full fibre broadband yet? Partly. As of late 2025, only around 28% of the district had full fibre coverage, with Openreach still actively building out the network. If you’re unsure what your building currently has, that’s worth checking before assuming a wifi upgrade alone will fix a speed problem.

Aaanyway…

If your wifi’s playing up, the quick fixes are worth trying. They genuinely do solve it sometimes. But if you’re restarting the router more often than you’re restarting your own PC, it’s probably not a wifi problem. It’s a “this network was set up for a different, smaller version of your business” problem. And we fix those, for businesses across Harlow, Essex and Herts. So give us a shout and we’ll come and have a proper look, no false modem-related hope required!

Got a question? We can answer it. Click here to get in touch.