What does no internet do to a household in 2025

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I woke at 6am on Tuesday (11th November) morning to the internet being down. One look at the Eero in my bedroom told me that it wasn’t happy, the Router in the main family room (living room) told me that wasn’t happy either.

A reboot of the Router did nothing, so I attended my first video meeting of the day at 7am via a Hotspot connection to my mobile phone. before phoning my ISP when the support desk opened to log a fault.

To describe our house’s use of the internet, I need to tell you a bit about us.

I work from home, pretty much full time as the Head of Compliance for a SaaS company. My youngest Daughter works from home 3 days a week and requires the internet.

My Wife and my Eldest daughter don’t work from home.

However, we currently have 44 devices connected to Wifi, so it’s fair to say that lack of internet is a problem.

I’d like to describe a lord of the flies type descent into madness, but it’s all been much more civilised than that.

As of now (Sunday evening) we’re still without internet. We all can use Cellular on our phones and we’ve sufficient data, but it’s not the same.

On Friday afternoon after being told that the fault was being passed to the next team at BT and the SLA for that team was up to 5 days, I went out and bought a MiFi

What doesn’t work

Apple Home - just doesn’t work without internet. We can’t control lights, heaters, plug sockets. Over the week, we’ve gradua lly unplugged things to use them manually.

Digital working from home doesn’t work particularly well without the internet. I’m dreading the next week when we’re being audited remotely by an assessor.

all of those things you want to look up quickly, you quickly get dissuaded from trying.

We have one TV in the house which uses an Aerial on the roof, so we can watch some live TV, nothing on demand though so we don’t blow through our cellular data.

It’s funny how much you take things like Power, Water, natural gas, and now the internet for granted when it works.

Please have me in your thoughts for me this week, or someone may post a link about a bloke from Manchester UK who went insane after he travelled to the National Comms company (British Telecom) with ill intent in his heart.

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Apple Home - just doesn’t work without internet. We can’t control lights, heaters, plug sockets. Over the week, we’ve gradua lly unplugged things to use them manually.

Wait, what. I thought that was the entire point of homekit/matter is that as long as the LAN is up, one can still use them via Siri.

Edit: I asked our AI overlords and i’m right: **HomeKit devices can be used locally even if the WAN (internet) is down. HomeKit is designed to operate on the local network (LAN) without requiring an internet connection for core functionality. **

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I don’t know what to tell you @NiKoBeaR, it hasn’t been working for us.

We’re on the latest versions using HomePod minis and various HomeKit certified devices.

The Home Screen showed updating on all of the devices.

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We are now back on the Internet. Apparently the Fibre splice had come apart and they’ve respliced it.

I’m so happy :grinning:

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That absolutely should not have taken that long to resolve, I hope they have notified you of your compensation.
Also maybe a business plan with enhanced care might be in order…

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I agree, 6 days is far too long to be off the internet. One of the engineers made a mistake on Friday and missed it. Things happen. :man_shrugging:t2:

Our ISP Zen Internet are a good company, it’s not their fault. We get automatic compensation due to the Voluntary Compensation scheme that our ISP joined.

My Fibre Internet costs £42 a month. Business Broadband costs £58 a month at the same speed. for the additional £192 a year, I’ll stay where I am. if I have a few more problems, that may change.

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After 6 days without internet, I think I would be making a cudgel out of a stone and sturdy branch and heading to the woods to hunt a mammoth. But, then I wouldn’t be able to ask Google how to cook it. Quandry.

Katie

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I worry sometimes that we are too dependent on the Internet. Our enemies in the world know this. Russia is already mapping the under sea cables coming in and out of the UK, and it would be a fairly trivial task for it to just cut all the cables if some future conflict were to arise.

Hopefully in the future, there may be some Starlink type solution.

I have been doing a digital cleanup of late and trying to minimise amount of apps and devices we use. However, the genie is out of the bottle and there’s no going back.

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The challenge I find is that the internet is no longer optional for many things. In the UK you need it to interact with the local council, make a doctors appointment, and connect with your child’s school. If you work from home it’s a must and nearly every form of business needs the Internet in some form. We just had some guys put a loft ladder in our attic and payment was through a sumup device linked to their smartphone via the internet.

I wonder how long it will be before an internet connection will be a human right? Life is certainly impossible without one on a long term basis.

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The first 48 hours are excluded, so we got £39 compensation (in total, not per day) for the other 4 full days we were without internet.

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