Poor WiFi - new router?

[richardsun]

Hi, we have issues with poor WiFi strength in our house. The house isn't massive so I suspect a newer/better router with dual band WiFi might solve the problem.
Current router is a Technicolor TG588 supplied many years ago by Shell Broadband.
I tried contacting TalkTalk support on the live chat to see if they would send me a new router, but didn't get any sense out of them.
I wonder if anyone on here can help?

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi richardsun

Please let us know how you get on.

Thanks

[richardsun]

@KeithFrench thanks for the offer of help.

A friend has kindly donated me an old router, which appears to be better than the old TalkTalk one. Will see how it goes.

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Keith is free to try to help you it just that I can't send you a router, if a replacement new router is required this would have to be dealt with by the dedicated support team

Chris

[KeithFrench]

As I said @richardsun I can provide a lot of help with WiFi interference, which is possibly the cause, you only have to ask for that.

Slow speed, intermittent dropouts, breaks in the signal or no signal on some or all devices or no internet access might be caused by Wi-Fi interference from other local networks, which can also lead to a permanent reduction in speed. No ISP can be responsible for your local environment, this is mainly a byproduct of the popularity of Wi-Fi.

However, other factors should be investigated first. When this happens, what are the lights showing on the front of the router? Do you have any wired connections & if so, how do they perform?

Generally speaking, the 2.4GHz band suffers a lot more from interference than the much faster 5GHz band, but the 2.4GHz one can sometimes have a better range, but this all depends on your local area.

In other words, I try to help you optimise your Wi-Fi connection. The next stage involves sending out a guide to you to help you get me some important diagnostic results so that I can analyse them for you and recommend changes to your router configuration to solve them.

I only send this out to people who request it.

The information below is provided by TalkTalk, for confirmation please contact @Debbie-TalkTalk or@Michelle-TalkTalk.

KeithFrench is one of our valued Community Stars and can help with a range of issues related to wireless and networking. At times he may ask you to send him test results via a Private Message to help analyse/diagnose an issue. Although Keith does not work for TalkTalk, he very kindly shares his time and knowledge to help with others.

If you need further help or, if we need to take any details such as personal information about your account like phone numbers, account numbers etc. one of the TalkTalk team will jump in and help out.

[richardsun]

Thanks for your reply. I have already attempted to seek support on this via the chat service, but got absolutely nowhere after wasting far too much time repeatedly describing my problem to different people. I'm not going to keep wasting my time on this, will probably just move to a different provider with better support.

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi Richard,

I'm sorry but if you're one of the shell migration customers there is a dedicated support team. If you contact customer service they be able to pass you to the right team, apologies for any inconvenience

Chris

[KeithFrench]

Yes, that should be the first logical step & if that does not solve the problem, then it is probably WiFi interference related & I can help a lot with that.

However, I do not know the policy & what router you might be entitled to, as you are an ex-Shell customer. I have therefore asked one of TalkTalk's support to pick your thread up and advise/replace it for you.

They aim to respond within 48 hours (Monday - Friday) excluding Bank Holidays, but if more urgent you can always try the Service Centre on 0345 172 0088. The posts are responded to in time/date order, oldest first.