Do you know of any families that do not have wifi?

[MattWanksock]

A colleague said today that the school her DC go to rang to ask if they had wifi at home and were able to homeschool for the foreseeable. I do not believe it to be a disadvantaged area but I have no idea as I don't work where I live.

At first I was surprised and a little upset for the children of the school that this question needs to be asked. Having spoken to DP he says I mustn't understand how privileged we are to not have been asked that question. I should also feel bad about such an assumption. It was also mentioned at the 5pm briefing that it would cost £100 in data on pay as you go to get complete a day of zoom and educational websites.

The school our DC attend just assumed we would have a device to do 1000 zoom calls a day which I do think was a bit off.

So... do you know any household with children 0-18 that does not have wifi? AIBU to think you would be hard pressed to find a house that didn't have wifi due to the way the world is now.

My kids dad doesn't.He had to bring back 8am so they could log on to Google classroom.

Many in the school where I teach. My nephew and his partner also have no wifi and have to rely on PAYG data on their phones to access online learning - when they have the money.

It is too easy to assume others have what we take for granted and can afford. To veer slightly if I may, a teacher I knew a few years ago told me that there were a couple of pupils in her class who had such problems at home that they could not even wear clean uniforms and underwear or socks etc. each day. The teachers discreetly provided them. These were teens, not little ones. Very sad situation.

We don’t, but my dad lives next door and we share his!

My friend is a teacher and lots of her students don’t. The school gave out tablets to some families without devices so the children could work at home, and some of the parents sold them!!

Just putting this here again.

Data is available through lots of providers - people have to ask school to help

get-help-with-tech.education.gov.uk/internet-access

poshme that only works if the basic infrastructure is in place... In our village only the main road has a proper broadband connection, other houses like ours physically aren't connected to the high speed line options I used to assume everyone would get these days, back when we lived in a city. So even if you have a school that's willing to help with getting internet access and/or a laptop etc... If you live in large swathes of rural areas, it means nothing. If BT haven't put in the line and there's shit 4g signal there's nothing a teacher can do about that "broadband poverty" problem.

A neighbour has had to start looking into building his own network with funding from his employer, I found out recently, but he works for a big global employer - no one in our string of houses has ten grand to throw at forcing BT to install the modern cables at our end. It's this scheme: www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/community-fibre-partnerships

.. which is fine if you can top up the digging fees to several thousand £££s, but what are us, and many Even poorer families meant to do, with us WFH and kids needing their own data streaming/videos?

Unless you have loads of cash or benefit from being in an urban setting, no one in government cares!

We do have broadband but the speed is so poor that it's hopeless. We were promised fibre to the property in May, but are still waiting. Right now I have DH WFH online, 2 uni student DDs trying to access lectures & tutorials online and I am meant to be teaching. It can't cope.

I am going into work to teach as their wifi works most of the time. The DDs are going back to uni. They can't manage here.

It's rural, but we are only 10 miles from the nearest city centre. I know of lots of people who don't have any internet and there is no mobile phone signal here either. We can get Freeview so do have TV but that's it. If anyone knows the number or email for Openreach to prod them into action, please do send it in my direction.

malbecfan we complained to Openreach CEO Clive Selley. They have an executive complaint team to answer questions. After a long time they basically told us to stump up the few grand to upgrade our line (which we can't afford) or basically fuck off. They're held to account by no one.

I did try asking Ofcom to help but they gathered the information and said they couldn't do much on individual cases. I then tried to get my MP involved but they didn't answer anything more than a boiler plate response.

The reality is that if we had £££££s to fix the problems we could sort it for our house within a short timeframe, but we're looking at years of having ancient infrastructure here without anyone really having any incentive to upgrade it.. unless you pay. Which is fine for my rich neighbour's kids access to online learning, not so much for everyone else.

It's a joke. It's not like we live in an island or that remotely either!!

Sorry, as in, Openreach answered my MP with a boilerplate response. My MP is lovely but doesn't have any real power to fix it.
Openreach might as well told her to piss off in their response letter, it would have been the same result.

Lots of households don't have WiFi. And other 'essential' things.

When DS started reception we had to compete a questionnaire saying if we have smart phones, WiFI, tablets etc in case another lockdown happened.

I live in a decent sized village in the South East, exceptionally affluent area. Our wifi is rubbish. Cuts out all the time while I’m Zoom teaching, and takes 4-5 hours to upload a ten minute teaching video to our learning platform.

The primary I teach at is in the next village, less than three miles away, and their wifi seems better. Not great, but much better. I have not the first clue why there is this disparity...

I don't know anyone without wi-fi,

Yes. Many families - including some with children who don’t even have sheets on their bed let alone WiFi!

Yes, my neighbour lives in a static, no net. They've come around on a few occasions over the years to use mine briefly, when they don't have phone data. I have no idea how their child is doing work at the moment, maybe they have a 4g router off the school or going into the school.
The Internet is also incredibly slow around here, you wouldn't be able to zoom easily on it, I use a 4g router for streaming, zoom calls, it's expensive for what data.

Ooh, wonder if Jeremy Corbyn was onto something after all!

Loads my cousin for a start once she started working from home she had to get it but until
Then she had survived on data on her phone. Fortunately her company have paid her bills so she is not out of pocket.

@Oblahdeeoblahdoe Well first, he didn’t set out how he would pay for it and second, anyone can say anything when they know they’ll never have to actually do it!

Here you go:

[email protected]

That was the "executive complaint" team we dealt with, who pretty much told us to fuck off and stop expecting an upgrade unless we had thousands to spend on it ... And who ignored our MP.

If you get any sort of service from them, you're doing better than us.