Research: Home WiFi vital for post-pandemic lifestyle
May 12, 2022
Research by Vodafone has revealed that European households have rapidly shifted to permanent ‘digital-first’ lifestyles in the wake of the global pandemic – with high-quality, reliable and secure WiFi now considered critical for wireless work, entertainment and social connectivity in the home.
Households in Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK were surveyed by Kantar for Vodafone in February 2022. With European homes possessing up to nine WiFi-enabled devices, three-quarters of householders agreed that the provision of reliable WiFi was their number one requirement. Four-in-five households where someone works from home regarded WiFi to be as important as electricity and gas, with the same number of home workers saying they couldn’t work at all without WiFi.
With an increase of more than 68 per cent in home working, as post-pandemic work/lifestyle patterns remain in place, Vodafone found that European households were balancing the competing demands for professional, personal and entertainment wireless connectivity.
WiFi coverage is now expected to be everywhere in the home – with two-thirds of households saying that they valued the ability to connect over WiFi anywhere in their property and not just in living areas near their WiFi router. Fifty per cent of European households expected WiFi to be available in every room of their house.
Domestic WiFi consumption continues to rise – 80 per cent of households said they needed WiFi more at home. The use of it to make video calls has also increased by 79 per cent over the last couple of years. At the same time, nine-out-of-10 households have attempted to tackle wireless connectivity challenges themselves without contacting their router provider’s helpdesk.
Secured WiFi is a secured home – almost three-quarters of households said that wireless security is as important to them as locking the front door.
“The last two years have seen a dramatic shift in home connectivity demands, as ‘digital’ lifestyles combined with growth of home working, streaming entertainment and smart devices in every room of the house,” notes Daniel Lambrou, Head of Broadband, Vodafone UK.