The upcoming flu season is likely to cause problems for broadband networks, as a greater number of employees will opt to work from home. This is likely to increase bandwidth demand at peak times during the day.

According to a report from Gartner and the Centre for Disease Control, as much as 40 per cent of the workforce may not be able to report to work for an extended period of time. The flu season most affects the children and since they will stay at home, parents will have to opt for the work-from-home option to be with them. This means a surge in broadband requirements for home networks during the day, and local networks may not be able to meet the need, resulting in lowering of broadband speeds.

Currently, home usage of broadband is lowest during the day, but the pandemic will change these usage patterns, albeit on a temporary basis. Employers could help plan for this change by distributing specialized software to employees and offering alternative means of connecting including WiMAX, 3G and satellite connectivity (see pay as you go dongle info).

According to Roberta Witty, head of research at Gartner, employers need to have the blueprint ready for pandemic situations and work with network service providers on how best the work-at-home issue could be tackled. Some of the alternatives are rescheduling of business processes, deciding which applications need internet usage the most, and staggering the operations accordingly to accommodate employee connectivity needs.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Shoppers Advice, Technometer, Telecommunication Center. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.