A latest research suggests people relying on home wi-fi are getting significantly slower speeds than from their fixed broadband connection.
The study ran one million tests over 14,000 wi-fi connections in the UK, US, Spain and Italy.
On average, the results showed a 30 per cent drop-off compared to the speed coming into the home.
However, the research also suggests that users tolerate slower speeds in exchange for the freedom wi-fi offers.
Iain Wood, from network measurement firm Epitiro, which carried-out the study, said, “People are voting with their feet and trading speed for the benefits of mobility.,”
He added that researchers were “surprised” by the amount of drop-off in speed but that for the majority of consumers the slower connection would not be noticed.
“Most of us do e-mailing and web surfing and for these things there is precious little difference between the 50Mb/s services and an 8Mb/s service,” he said.
This is because web surfing uses up relatively small amounts of data.
But for other services, such as downloading video or watching IPTV, the degradation of speed will become more noticeable.
Telephony services such as Skype could also be particularly affected, thinks Professor Andy Nix, a wireless expert at Bristol University.
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