The WiFi Squeeze in High-Rises (And Why Your Tenants Are Secretly Suffering)

12 November 2025, 08:45

The WiFi Squeeze in High-Rises (And Why Your Tenants Are Secretly Suffering)

Let’s be honest: if you’re managing a high-rise and you haven’t heard someone complain about “the WiFi,” it probably means they’ve already left.

On paper, everything looks great with plenty of bandwidth, dozens of access points, and top-tier ISPs. But tenants still grumble about slow video calls, lagging apps, and vanishing signals. What’s going on?

Spoiler: It’s Not the Router

This isn’t a one-off complaint or a fussy tenant. It’s a symptom of something deeper: WiFi exhaustion and it’s becoming the silent killer of tenant experience in high-density commercial buildings.

Welcome to the modern residential and office airspace crisis.

So… What Is WiFi Exhaustion?

Think of your building’s radio frequency spectrum like a shared hallway. Everyone (every router, every laptop, every printer, every smart light bulb) is yelling at once. Nobody can hear anyone else clearly, and things start to fall apart.

This chaos is amplified by:

• Adjacent Channel Interference: Two networks talking over each other like radio stations bleeding into one another. This is very common in residential buildings and student housing, but multi-tenant offices aren’t imune.
• Co-Channel Interference: Everyone waiting their turn on the same frequency like a coffee queue with no barista.

The more devices and networks, the worse it gets. Especially in high-rises, where every tenant brings their own gear, and every floor adds to the noise. It’s a classic case of too many cooks and zero coordination.

The Problem Isn’t Fixable by Tenants

At least, not entirely.

Here’s the kicker: no amount of router-swapping or channel-hopping by individual tenants will solve this. In fact, they usually make it worse. One tenant’s “fix” becomes another tenant’s new headache.

This isn’t a tenant problem, it’s a building-wide design issue. And that means property managers need to take the lead.

Three Reasons Why the Problem Is Growing

1. Too Many Devices: Phones, laptops, tablets, printers, air quality sensors, smart signage, you name it. It’s a digital traffic jam.

2. Bandwidth-Hungry Apps: Zoom. Teams. Cloud apps. They’re not just casual users, they’re streaming, syncing, updating… constantly.

3. Modern Materials, Old-School Problems: Low-emissivity glass and steel make for beautiful buildings but also terrible signal blockers. Metal plates, heavy isolation, etc makes it all worse and more reflective.

If you’re chasing ESG goals and installing smart tech while using materials that kill WiFi, congratulations: you’ve entered the Green Building Paradox.

The (Real) Fix: Managed WiFi as a Building Utility

It’s time to stop treating WiFi like an amenity and start managing it like electricity or water.

A centralized, managed WiFi solution means:

• Purposeful, interference-aware network design
• Real-time monitoring and optimization
• Network segmentation so IoT doesn’t fight with Teams calls (and properly using all the frequencies)
• Better security, lower maintenance, and best of all happy tenants

At FlatTurtle, we’ve helped commercial buildings across Belgium go from WiFi chaos to quiet, seamless performance. And the impact? Fewer complaints, better reviews, and longer leases.

Ready to End the Interference War?

If your high-rise building still relies on BYO routers and hope, it might be time for a serious rethink. Let’s design a network that doesn’t just work, it disappears into the background and lets your building shine.

Let’s chat. And yes, we promise the call won’t drop.

ps: We focus on high-rises because they’re dense, vertical environments packed with devices and overlapping networks. Signals easily bleed across floors, creating constant interference. When Yeri lived in Singapore, this was a massive issue in condo and HDB buildings: neighbours’ WiFi networks often collided, slowing everything to a crawl. But the same problem can occur anywhere with dense user base, heavy usage and too many competing networks.