Business Wi-Fi and networks in Liverpool
Brilliant broadband is wasted if it does not reach the far end of the building. We survey the space, design the coverage around how it is actually used, and install it properly.
On the ground in Liverpool
Wi-Fi design is a building problem before it is a technology problem, and the building stock in this city is unusually varied.
The converted warehouses of the Baltic Triangle and the Ropewalks look ideal on a floorplan and behave badly in practice. Solid brick, steel structure, exposed services and high ceilings all change how signal travels, and open plan does not mean open to radio.
The Georgian quarter and the professional district bring the opposite problem. Lots of small rooms, thick masonry between them, and often a listed status that limits where you are allowed to run cable at all. That constrains the design before you have chosen a single access point.
Hospitality and retail around the waterfront, Liverpool ONE and the Ropewalks have a different challenge again: a room that works perfectly when empty and falls over when three hundred people walk in, because bodies absorb signal and every one of them is carrying two devices.
We survey before quoting rather than counting rooms on a plan, because in buildings like these the plan tells you very little. Our 120-desk city centre fit-out is a good example of what that process looks like.
Why Synergy Max
Sound familiar?
Almost every Wi-Fi complaint we are called out to in this city comes down to a building that was never surveyed, or a plan that followed the desks rather than the people.
Converted warehouse brick, steel frames, thick Georgian walls and the odd bit of foil-backed insulation. Liverpool building stock absorbs signal in ways a modern office simply does not.
Access points get planned around where people sit, then everyone spends their day in the breakout area, the meeting room or the kitchen, where nobody put one.
A single consumer router in the corner of the ground floor was never going to cover three floors, and no amount of restarting it will change that.
Customer devices sitting on the same network as your tills, your files and your card terminals, with one password everybody in the building knows.
Coverage tested in an empty room proves very little. Bodies absorb signal, and every person who walks in is carrying at least two devices wanting a connection.
Consumer kit gives you a flashing light and a guess. Without a controller showing every access point and every connected device, diagnosing a fault is guesswork.
What we do
The survey is the part that matters. Everything after it is installation.
Common questions
Easy to establish, and worth doing before you spend anything. Run a speed test on a device plugged into the router with a cable, then run the same test on Wi-Fi at the far end of the building. If the wired figure is good and the wireless one is not, your broadband is fine and the network is the problem. Upgrading the line will not fix it.
Usually, but the design has to start from what you are permitted to do rather than what would be easiest. Cable routes are the constraint, not the wireless. We have worked in enough protected buildings around the city to plan around it, and it is far cheaper to design for it than to discover it halfway through an install.
It depends on the building far more than the floor area, which is why anybody quoting from a square footage figure alone is guessing. A converted warehouse with solid internal walls can need several times what an equivalent modern open plan office needs. That is what the survey is for.
Yes, and you should. VLANs put guests on a completely separate logical network so they cannot see your tills, your files or your card terminals. For venues we can also add an opt-in sign-in that builds a marketing list, though that has to be genuine consent under UK GDPR and PECR rather than a harvested address.
Yes, and they are a different design problem. A busy bar or event space needs capacity planning rather than coverage planning, because the failure happens when the room fills rather than when somebody walks to the far corner. Our match-day network near Anfield shows how that is approached.
The rest of what we look after for Liverpool businesses.
Ask us
Send this and a real person will reply. No call centre, no obligation, and we will tell you honestly if we are not the right fit.
Tell us where the Wi-Fi drops out and what the building is made of. We will survey it, design coverage around how you actually use the space, and install something that works in every room that matters.
