Why is my Wi-Fi slower than the speed I pay for?
The two bands, and why one disappears through walls
Modern routers broadcast on 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. The 5 GHz band is much faster but its signal is absorbed by walls and floors. The 2.4 GHz band travels further but is far more congested — it is shared with Bluetooth devices, microwaves, and every neighbour's network.
Phones switch between them automatically and not always well. If speeds are good in one room and poor two rooms away, you are watching this trade-off.
How much speed you actually need
HD streaming needs roughly 5 Mbps, 4K around 25, a video call about 3 in each direction. A 1 Gbps plan does not make one stream faster — it lets more devices do those things simultaneously. If a single 4K stream struggles on a fast plan, the bottleneck is coverage or latency, not the line into the building.
Testing properly
Pause downloads and other devices first, or you are measuring what is left over rather than what is available. Test more than once and at different times of day. A single mid-afternoon reading tells you very little about how the connection behaves at nine in the evening.
Step by step
- Test next to the router
This is your true line speed. Write it down. - Test where you actually sit
The difference between the two numbers is what your walls are costing you. - Test on cellular in the same spot
If cellular is also slow, the problem is neither your router nor your plan. - Repeat in the evening
Peak-hour congestion is real and it is when you actually use the connection.
Our iOS app for exactly this. Runs on your device — no account, no tracking.