By Trent Houlahan · Director, Northern Currents Electrical
Here's the unusual thing about hardwired internet: it's the one healthy electrical upgrade that needs no health argument at all. Cabled Ethernet beats Wi-Fi on speed, latency, stability, and security. The reduced wireless exposure comes free.
Wi-Fi is a shared radio medium. Every wall attenuates it, every neighbour's network competes with it, and every additional device divides it. A Cat6 cable is a dedicated line: full speed, consistent latency, no interference, no drop-outs during video calls. If anyone in your house works from home, games, or streams in 4K, they will feel the difference the first day. Wired connections are also inherently harder to intercept than anything broadcast through the air.
A router and its mesh satellites transmit radiofrequency signals continuously — including the eight hours everyone's asleep. To be clear about the evidence: ARPANSA and the WHO maintain that Wi-Fi exposure at typical household levels hasn't been substantiated as a health risk. We don't overclaim this. But precautionary design asks a simpler question: if the wired option performs better anyway, why broadcast around the clock? Hardwire the fixed devices, and you can shrink the wireless footprint to a fraction of a typical home's — or put the remaining Wi-Fi on a timer so it sleeps when you do.
Not a server room. A typical installation runs Cat6 from a small central point to the places devices actually live: the TV cabinet, the desks, the study, maybe a ceiling access point positioned away from bedrooms for phones and tablets. TVs, consoles, desktops, and streaming boxes go on cable and off the radio permanently. In a new build or renovation this is trivial to rough in — a few hundred metres of cable while the walls are open. In an existing home it's a day or two of careful work through the roof space, and we can usually reach every room that matters.
The difference between a network that performs and one that frustrates is termination and testing — cheap cable badly punched down will silently throttle a gigabit connection to a fraction of it. Every point we install is tested and certified for its rated speed, labelled at the patch panel, and documented so any future electrician (ideally us) knows exactly what goes where. Data cabling in Australia also legally requires a registered cabler — it isn't a DIY-forever situation once cables enter walls.
If you're planning a build, get the data design done with the electrical design — cable routes, access point positions, and power isolation all interact. Our EMF reduction page covers how it fits into the bigger picture.
We design and install certified data networks across the Northern Rivers.