Rant: Customer watched me run a drop and then asked why I didn't "just use Wi-Fi"

Was at a house in the old Riverview neighborhood yesterday. Ran about 80 feet of Cat6 from the demarc to their office. Took me an hour to fish through the crawl space. When I finished, the guy says "Couldn't you have just used a mesh router thing?" I tried to explain latency and reliability but he was already scrolling his phone. Has anyone else had clients question why we still run physical cable?

2 comments

2 Comments

bethcarr1mo ago

80 feet of cable in a Riverview crawl space and the guy asks about mesh WiFi. That's the same energy as people who buy an SUV for the one time a year they drive on a gravel road. Everyone wants the convenience without understanding the tradeoffs. It's like when folks order a latte and complain it's not as fast as instant coffee - yeah, the process takes longer but the result is way better. I've seen too many people drop serious money on those fancy mesh systems and still complain about buffering during video calls.

dylan4131mo ago

I did a 40 foot cable run through a wet basement once because the homeowner insisted mesh was "good enough." Took three hours of crawling, but that connection's been solid for five years now. Mesh is fine for people who want to stream Netflix in the living room, not for anyone who actually depends on their internet for work.