North American Renters and Homeowners Paying the Price for Poor Connectivity in Homes

American renters and homeowners are paying $337 per year for unnecessary mobile data fees due to poor internet at home

Consumers are paying the price for poor connectivity in homes according to a report by WiredScore, the company behind the internationally recognized digital connectivity rating platform for real estate, released in time for its launch of its new residential product WiredScore Home with the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC). 

Over eight in ten (86 percent) renters and homeowners in North America have experienced poor connectivity at some point in their homes, forcing them to use an additional 42GB of extra data a year to compensate for their poor Wi-Fi. This is costing affected householders an additional $337 a year.

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Despite consumers paying on average $744 a year for their home internet service – this additional cost is being incurred by users trying to overcome regular connectivity issues within their homes – typically experiencing 20 issues a month affecting two rooms in the average home. It’s perhaps no surprise that half of all North American renters and homeowners (50 percent) would not have moved into their property if they had known about the connectivity issues they would face. 

The research has been commissioned as part of the launch of WiredScore Home in North America, the latest certification from global digital connectivity rating company WiredScore that focuses on residential property. WiredScore Home builds on the immense success of the commercial real estate certification, which has certified more than 700 million sq. ft. across twelve countries impacting seven million office workers since its launch in 2013. 

The certification supports developers looking to improve the design of the connectivity services for new buildings to prevent the need for expensive retrofits. It also introduces critical transparency to the residential market, enabling landlords and operators to demonstrate the higher quality service in their buildings. Forty-two buildings have signed up for WiredScore Home in North America, and over 14,000 apartments from industry leaders such as Hines, Greystar, JP Morgan, KingSett Capital, Starlight Developments, UDR, Cadillac Fairview, The John Buck Company, Skanska, McNair Interests, Crescent Communities, and Ascentris are putting their residents’ needs at the forefront of their offering by committing to improve the digital connectivity in their buildings through the WiredScore Home certification. 

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The business impact

Throughout the pandemic, home connectivity has been crucial for bosses that depended on workers having reliable Wi-Fi at home to keep their businesses open. Similarly, many workers expressed that they would not have been able to keep their jobs throughout the pandemic without a strong internet connection.

• 90 percent of executives say that employees having access to high-speed internet access at home has been important

• Over half (55 percent) of respondents ranked being kicked off an important Zoom call due to poor internet as the same level of stress as having a root canal operation
• For workers, half (50 percent) acknowledged they wouldn’t have been able to keep their jobs if they hadn’t been able to work remotely with high-speed internet access

WiredScore’s Founder and CEO, Arie Barendrecht, explained: “We are really excited to be bringing WiredScore Home to North America. Great connectivity is critical to almost all aspects of our lives – leisure, social and particularly work as we’ve learnt this past year. We are confident that transparency around digital connectivity in the home provided by our WiredScore certification will mean that consumers are able to make more informed decisions when deciding where to live and will allow multifamily investors and developers alike to uphold the highest standards in their developments.”

Kevin Donnelly, Vice President, Government Affairs at the National Multifamily Housing Council, added, “High quality digital connectivity is a critical requirement of the modern-day renter. As this report highlights and the pandemic has shown us, reliable broadband is essential to almost all aspects of our daily life. Multifamily landlords in particular have been setting out to prioritize connectivity and ensure a higher level of service and superior experience. To achieve this, they need to know that the buildings they are investing in can provide for renters today, and will also deliver the technology renters will be using tomorrow. WiredScore is a welcome development in the multifamily market and will help provide transparency and recognition for best-in-class digital infrastructure.”