The Year Covid Hits 2020
Nobody could have anticipated the events of 2020 and the impact the pandemic would have on our everyday lives. Indeed, talk at the beginning of the year was all about our breakaway from the European Union. Then along came Covid and one thing is for sure that businesses in the main will not be going back to the working practices prior to March of last year.
The year of Covid has taught us a great deal about the kind of connectivity both companies and consumers will demand. To say lockdown proved just how much the UK needs high-capacity fibre is a bit of an understatement, moving forward.
April 2020 and a change to working habits
From 23rd March, 20, lockdown one; if you can work from home, do so, was the Government’s instruction. Demand for solutions to enable this went through the roof and we were never busier in catering for the wants, needs and requirements from our existing customer base. This, in turn, led to a rise in new customers seeking solutions their providers were struggling to accommodate. Taking VoIP phones home, Horizon Collaborate, Zoom and Microsoft Teams were in huge demand for immediate deployment as businesses looked to connect armies of remote workers to cloud based services and video conferencing.
With a lack of decent broadband in many areas problems began to occur. We are sure many of you would have been on numerous video calls and experienced a problem on most. Someone would freeze mid-sentence or stuttering audio sound. Someone else might drop out altogether and be required to dial back in.
Moving forward – 2021
It is inevitable that Covid will leave a lasting impression on the way we work, with hybrid working models – whereby, employees spend some of the week in the office and some of it at home – set to become the norm.
We will need more bandwidth, and lots of it. Openreach’s decision to retire the legacy, copper-based infrastructure by 2025 should accelerate the pace of fibre roll-out which cannot come soon enough for many.
UK Fibre providers, historically, have been able to focus on bandwidth requirements at business centres during the day and residential suburbs in the evening. Now, business districts are all but silent while residential areas hum with almost continual digital activity.
While businesses continue to take advantage of the various grants available to invest in high-capacity leased lines, remote workers will increasingly need FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) internet connectivity. Your need for speed will depend on what exactly you do, but in the new world of work there may be more than one home worker in any household. FTTP speeds of around 100/300Mbps are probably more than enough for now, but it is not too much of a stretch to imagine data-hungry multi-homeworker residences requiring 1Gb connectivity in the not-too-distant future. Most end-users with fibre, at present, will be getting a maximum download of 80Mbps on FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) – the green box at the end of the street.
In conclusion
Deep Blue can source and supply the best deals from the likes of BT, Virgin, Vaioni, Talk Talk, SES, Gamma, Zen, City Fibre to name but a few. With Government-funded grants available why not give us a shout and find out what works best for you…it’s all about speed.