Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Jeff in San Jose, California listens on KLIV 1590 AM and asked us a question about the effect of TV antennas on WiFi. He said:
I heard on one of your shows that it was easy to put up a television antenna to bring in HD broadcasts. I’m thinking of doing that, but I have a question. I have heard that a TV antenna will kill a Wi-Fi signal. I am hesitant to put an antenna up on the wall, because I don’t want to lose any Wi-Fi signal. Can you give me your thoughts on that please?
Digital television signals (called DTV) operate on the same frequencies previously used for VHF and UHF broadcast channels. The highest DTV channel has a center frequency of 693.25 MHz.
Your WiFi router runs on either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz, or both in some cases, and those frequencies are so far away from the ones used by DTV that interference isn’t really possible.
So how did the rumor get started? Our best guess is that someone had an antenna amplifier cranked way up, and the over-modulation caused some splash harmonics that caused issues in the WiFi frequencies. But no, a TV antenna will not “kill” a WiFi signal. That’s a myth.