Most office Wi-Fi complaints are not about the internet connection at all. The broadband line can be perfectly healthy while the meeting room at the far end of the floor drops every video call and the desk by the lift gets a quarter of the speed of the desk by the door. Nine times out of ten, the cause is where the access points are — or how many of them there are. Getting placement right is a planning exercise that pays for itself in fewer complaints.
Start with a floor plan, not a product
Before buying anything, mark up a floor plan: where people sit, where meetings happen, and where devices live. Count the devices honestly — laptops, phones, printers, smart TVs, door controllers and CCTV cameras all use the network, and 40 people can easily mean 100 connected devices. Note the materials too. Drywall and glass are fairly kind to Wi-Fi; concrete cores, lift shafts and metal racking are not. A wall that looks thin on a drawing can cut a signal in half.
How many access points do you need?
There is no fixed square-metre rule, because density matters as much as area. For a typical Dubai office with standard partition walls, we plan on one access point per 90–140 square metres of open-plan space — and add more wherever people gather. A 20-person meeting room, a boardroom and a training room each deserve their own access point, because 20 laptops joining a video call at once is a heavy load for one radio. The same applies to reception areas and breakout spaces where staff and visitors gather with phones in hand.
Where to mount them
Access points belong on the ceiling, in the middle of the area they serve — not in a corner, above a false ceiling, or inside a comms cabinet. Ceiling mounting gives the clearest line of sight to devices below and spreads the signal evenly. Mounting one behind a metal cabinet, above a duct or inside a storage cupboard is the most common placement mistake we find on site surveys. If the ceiling is very high, as in a warehouse or a double-height lobby, the access point needs to come down on a drop pole or be wall-mounted at a sensible height, otherwise devices below get a weak, unreliable signal.
Think in channels, not just coverage
Two access points too close together fight each other. Neighbours should use different, non-overlapping channels — on the 2.4 GHz band that means channels 1, 6 and 11 only — and their transmit power should be turned down so each one covers its own area rather than shouting across the whole floor. Modern business access points handle much of this automatically, but only if they are managed as a system. Standalone consumer routers, each left on full power and on the same channel, are a recipe for the dead zones businesses complain about.
Plan for the 5 GHz band first
The 5 GHz band is faster and far less congested, but its signal does not travel as far or pass through walls as well as 2.4 GHz. So design coverage around 5 GHz: place access points close enough that devices stay on the faster band wherever people work. The 2.4 GHz band then becomes the fallback for corridors, stairwells and far corners — useful, but not the band your video calls should depend on. If your team moves between floors, check that devices hand over cleanly from one access point to the next; a device clinging to a distant access point is a classic cause of "the Wi-Fi works everywhere except my desk".
Test before you sign off
Once the access points are in, walk the floor with a survey app and check the signal in every room, not just near the access points. Look for dead zones behind lift cores, in corner meeting rooms and at the far end of the floor. Test with a real video call, not just a speed test — a connection can show a good download speed and still drop calls if the signal is unstable. If a room underperforms, moving an access point by a few metres is far cheaper than living with the problem for a year.
Common mistakes we see
- One access point for a whole floor: 40 devices sharing one radio means slow speeds for everyone.
- Mounting in the comms room: the metal rack and walls kill the signal before it reaches anyone.
- Leaving everything on auto: unmanaged access points still pick overlapping channels and full power.
- Forgetting the meeting rooms: the room where the most important calls happen is the one most often left without its own access point.
- Never re-testing after a refit: move a partition wall or add a glass meeting room and the coverage map changes.
Good Wi-Fi is mostly a placement decision, made once and lived with daily. A short site survey and a sensible layout cost far less than the lost calls and frustrated staff that bad coverage produces. If your office has dead zones, patchy meeting rooms or a network that slows down every afternoon, request a quote, call us on (04) 359 4874, or message us on WhatsApp at +971 52 562 1946 for a free site survey — we will walk your floor, map the coverage, and give you a clear plan for reliable Wi-Fi in every room.