Wire My House for Internet

The room that never works properly

There is usually one. The office over the garage. The basement where the TV buffers every night. The upstairs bedroom that has one bar and a lot of opinions about it.

You have probably already tried moving the router, adding a booster, and paying for a faster plan. If none of it worked, that is not your fault and it is not your internet company’s fault either. The signal is being asked to travel through your house, and your house is winning.

The fix is a wire. One cable, run to where the problem is, and the problem stops being a problem.

Wait, do people still run cable?

Yes, and more than they used to.

Everything in a house that matters now, the TV, the work laptop, the game console, the cameras, the video calls, wants a steady connection more than it wants a fast one. A cable gives it that. It does not slow down when the neighbours get home, it does not drop mid call, and it does not care how thick your walls are.

The honest version: wireless is wonderful for the things that move, and a wire is better for everything that does not. Most homes want some of both. What you almost never want is wireless doing a job a single cable could have done properly.

But my house is finished. Do the walls have to come apart?

No. This is the part people brace for and it is almost never as bad as they expect.

Running cable in a house that is already built and lived in is its own skill. It is about finding the routes that already exist, the attic, the basement ceiling, the space beside a cold air return, an old phone or coax line that can be used as a pull path. Most of the work happens in places you never see.

A recent job in a 1960s bungalow in Calgary, cable to rooms on the main floor and the finished basement, needed two small cutouts in total, both patched and painted-ready before the van left. That is a normal outcome, not a lucky one.

You will get an honest answer before anything starts. If a run genuinely cannot be done without damage, you will be told that, and told what the alternative is.

“He was the only person who quoted on our ethernet retrofit who spent time really problem solving the situation at the quote. He looked at every different angle and took the one that was efficient and caused the least amount of damage.”

Beth A., Calgary, Google review, August 2026

What actually gets done

• A plan first. Which rooms, what for, and the least invasive route to each. You see it before anyone drills anything.
• The cable pulled and terminated. Every end finished properly and tested, not just plugged in and hoped for.
• Extra cable left at each end. So a wall plate can move later without a new run. This costs nothing now and saves a whole job later.
• Every cable labelled. At both ends. The next person to open that panel, possibly you, will know what everything is.
• Wireless sorted at the same time, if that is part of it. A wire to the right spot usually fixes the wireless too, because the access point finally has something solid behind it.
• A written record of what was installed and where. Yours to keep.

The labelling and the documentation are the parts nobody thinks to ask for and everyone is grateful for in year three.

What it costs

Cable work is quoted per house, because houses are not the same. A bungalow with two runs and a three storey with nine are different jobs, and a price list that pretended otherwise would be lying to one of them.

What you can count on: the equipment goes on your quote at cost. The manufacturer’s price, nothing added. The charge is for the design and the labour, which means nobody here makes more money by putting more gear on your list. When the honest answer is that you do not need something, saying so costs nothing.

The equipment, briefly

Most of this work is built on Ubiquiti UniFi, a professional networking system that you own outright. No monthly fee to use your own network, no licence to keep paying, and if you ever want to manage it yourself, you can.

If you would rather understand it properly before you buy anything, all of it is written up free at the AVNFi UniFi wiki. No signup, no email required. Start with Start Here for the ground floor, then the choosing guides once you know what you are after.

Three ways to do this

You do not have to hand over the whole job.

1. Take the plan and do it yourself. Buy the gear wherever you like, pull your own cable. The design is a real deliverable, not a sales document with a hook in it. Some people enjoy this part and nobody here will talk them out of it.
2. Do the physical work, and have the setup done for you. You pull the cable, someone else configures the network properly, remotely.
3. Hand over all of it. Designed, installed, configured, tested, labelled, documented. You get a working house and a walkthrough.

None of these is the wrong answer, and nobody gets treated differently for picking a cheaper one. More detail on all three: Working With AVNFi.

Get a straight answer

Describe your house and which rooms are giving you trouble. You will get told what it takes, and which of the three routes makes sense for you.

Get a quote or call (587) 858-4888

Serving Calgary, Okotoks, Airdrie, Cochrane and Chestermere.