But before you start turning off all the Christmas lights that you painstakingly put up this past weekend after reading our headline, read through this entire article first. UK communications regulator Ofcom recently released a report saying that these pretty lights, among a host of other things, may be affecting your router’s connectivity and causing interference in your music streaming or Netflix watching or Clash of Clans playing. But a test conducted by Linksys says that this may be too “ominous” of a claim.
The context of the report released by Ofcom is actually to promote their free Wi-Fi checker app, so right then and there, some are skeptical about the veracity of it. But what they were saying is that some devices in your house or office may be causing interference in your WiFi connectivity. They named halogen lamps, electrical dimmer switches, stereo or computer speakers, and fairy lights or tree lights as just some things that may be “blocking” your router so you should “keep your router as far away as possible from other electrical devices” or so they say.
But our friends at SlashGear went over to their friends at Linksys, asking if there’s any truth to this. A spokesperson said that they did their own testing as well after the report came out and said that this interference is “unlikely to be noticeable or detectable” unless you actually wrapped the lights around your router. But it is possible that if your lights had unshielded wires (but why would you have those, really?) then it could “slightly affect” any radio frequency near it.
So unless you’re using cheap ass Christmas lights that would eventually get “unwrapped” and then you wrap them around your router, then no need to panic. Just go on with your online activities and blame your ISP if your connection is slower than usual.
VIA: SlashGear
