Some friends live in a rental that they’ve decorated well. It wasn’t until multiple visits that I realized they had run Ethernet throughout the house.
You can get skinny Ethernet cables that bend easily. If you get some that match your paint, and route them in straight lines, those can be unobtrusive. Use tricks like running the cables along baseboards and other trim pieces. If you really want to minimize the visual impact you can use cable runners and paint over them. The cables are not attention-grabbing compared to furniture or art on the wall.
If you’re willing to drill holes (if you terminate the cable yourself, the hole can be narrow), you can pass the cables through walls. If you don’t want to drill, you can go under a door.
If you’ve got fourteen outlets, it seems like there ought to be some solution to get cables everywhere you need.
I use to wire houses. (Here all wires go in tubes.) The absurdity of not adding a few empty tubes for later use endlessly amazed me.
I think I've done only one house where the owner wanted to be able to put speakers in every corner of every room on every floor with multiple possible locations for his stereo.
Then he wanted multiple cable tv connections per room, multiple sockets for landlines, Ethernet everywhere.
The speaker tube was left empty and a few short distance sockets didn't have wires in them.
It seemed excessive even to me but it isn't actually a lot of work to run 5 tubes in stead of 1. You might add 1-2% to the renovation bill. Even less for a new house.
The end result was wonderful. He could do his chores with music all over the house. Move his TV sofa bed or desk where ever he wanted.
Doing this after the house is finished is more expensive, it takes a lot more work and the result is inferior.
I think nowadays we should have an USB socket next to each power outlet that provides both internet and extra fast charging. In reality I've never even seen such socket.
With a few small updates Android could switch off wifi and mobile networking and seamlessly switch to calling over <s>wifi</s> wired internet when you plug in the charging cable.
Who knows, maybe the mobile phone could even be a first class citizen in the landline network.
> I think nowadays we should have an USB socket next to each power outlet that provides both internet and extra fast charging. In reality I've never even seen such socket.
I've seen power outlets with embedded USB power adapters. I think I've seen usb ethernet adaptets with embedded USB power for like chromecasts and similar. But not both smooshed into the same outlet. It might be problematic because nobody wants to mix low voltage and high voltage together in the wall. But it's technically feasible.
> With a few small updates Android could switch off wifi and mobile networking and seamlessly switch to calling over <s>wifi</s> wired internet when you plug in the charging cable.
I'm not sure you need updates. I think if the adapter exposes as usb cdc-ethernet that would likely work out of the box, and there may be drivers for specific usb nics available as well; I haven't checked, but this is a thing that is used by ChromeCast devices and AndroidTV devices, so it should also work on Android. Seamlessness is maybe in the air, but if it's seamless from wifi to cellular, it should be better going from wired to something else, because wired has an unambigious and timely disconnect signal.
> Who knows, maybe the mobile phone could even be a first class citizen in the landline network.
IMHO there's less value here; the landline network has degraded and there's not really any first class citizens anymore. Few people retain landlines, and those that remain tend to be ATAs in the home; if you care to use that with an android, there's likely better options than interfacing with the analog side.
My current house is a new build. It’s a spec home, so customization was limited but I really regret not going overboard with the wiring. Next time I’m getting low voltage power to every window (electric blinds), coax and conduit to the attic (TV antennas and maybe ham antennas), Ethernet to the front door (video doorbell) and the eaves (networked cameras) and the ceiling in every room (WAP, presence sensors, probably lots of other things), and more circuits than I think I need to the basement (homelab). At the time, they were asking $150 per additional outlet, which seemed crazy so I got stingy. In retrospect, I wish I had rolled $10k in wiring into the mortgage. Oh well. Maybe next time.
I did this years ago using the very thin (3mm, round) Unifi Patch Cables in white. Very clean and reliable, and getting 1 Gbit/s without issue.
Another benefit is that I can cram 4 of them inside a single cable runner at the one spot I have to (no space for a switch). Where it's just one cable you run them bare and they look very clean.
The old ones I have are still CAT5e, the newer ones they sell are CAT6 at the same thinness. All unshielded (UTP).
Patch cables are meant for connections between equipment, e.g. in a networking cabinet. Cable for the runs between terminal points (like the cabinet's patch panel and a workstation, or your home TV, etc.) is less flexible - more shielded and I think solid core instead of multi-stranded (like twin & Earth vs. flex) - I'm not sure if it's available flat or skinny though.
You can get skinny Ethernet cables that bend easily. If you get some that match your paint, and route them in straight lines, those can be unobtrusive. Use tricks like running the cables along baseboards and other trim pieces. If you really want to minimize the visual impact you can use cable runners and paint over them. The cables are not attention-grabbing compared to furniture or art on the wall.
If you’re willing to drill holes (if you terminate the cable yourself, the hole can be narrow), you can pass the cables through walls. If you don’t want to drill, you can go under a door.
If you’ve got fourteen outlets, it seems like there ought to be some solution to get cables everywhere you need.