Pandemic May Slow Down Broadband Speeds
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Analysts Gartner and the Centre for Disease Control believe that owing to the pandemic, 40 percent of the workforce will not be able to reach their workplace for an extended period of time. It implies that there will be an increase in broadband demand, as the workers will be working from home, and local networks will find difficulty coping with heavy traffic.
Children will mostly stay at home during the flu season and so will their working parents, with the result that both children and parents will be using the internet more often during daytime, resulting in greater demand for bandwidth.
Though employers have distributed special software to help with bandwidth and latency issues, Gartner has suggested increased usage of 3G, WiMAX or satellite connections to curb the speed problems caused by a pandemic (click for dongle information).
Roberta Witty, research vice president at Gartner, stated that a variety of strategies for WAH including pandemic and WAH impact planning in close coordination with ISPs need to be set up by the organizations. The business operations requiring heavy internet usage should be identified in advance and hours of operations should be broken up so that the required bandwidth can be obtained.
