Rapid rise in work from home #WFH drives demand for enterprise grade connectivity

As states and localities put in place contagion control measures that shut down centralized commute in offices in mid-March of this year, many knowledge workers migrated to working at home. But with only about a third of all U.S. homes having access to fiber to the premise (FTTP) connections, many found their home connections wanting.

They are less secure than enterprise connections. Bandwidth is tight and competes with other users in the household such as students engaged in online learning and video entertainment streaming. Service from legacy telephone and cable companies is optimized for streaming video entertainment with asymmetric circuits allocating much more bandwidth to downloading than uploading. That’s not optimal for virtual knowledge work that often involves the use of two-way videoconferencing and virtual private networking.

The virtual office in the cloud needs fiber connectivity. A co-working space company offering its aptly branded CloudVO (virtual office) recognizes this need. It sells passes for access to these spaces offering what it describes as enterprise-grade connectivity – presumably FTTP.

Meanwhile, AT&T recently rolled out a new business offering aimed at bringing enterprise grade connectivity to home-based knowledge workers. AT&T’s Home Office Connectivity however isn’t FTTP per se. It would also use business class fixed wireless service supported by its mobile 4G LTE infrastructure where there’s no FTTP infrastructure and as a backup network. But that’s where the service becomes decidedly more residential than business class. It’s sold in bandwidth consumption tiers of 8, 12 and 50 Mbps at $80, $130 and $200 monthly, respectively.

The target market for Home Office Connectivity is businesses, not the homes of home-based knowledge workers according to AT&T:

The service enables businesses of any size to extend enterprise broadband connectivity throughout their workforce, whether it is for a single additional line or thousands. It also simplifies onboarding and management with consolidated invoicing directed to the business, single-number enterprise customer care, and professional on-site installation by a certified AT&T technician.

The line between residential and business service in the legacy telephone company business structure is becoming blurred.

Virtual workforce requires robust telecom infrastructure

While a recent survey found that less than 4 percent of U.S. private sector workers actually work from home, that figure could reach as high as 30 percent by 2019, according to TechCast, a George Washington University–based virtual think tank.

What's behind this coming workplace revolution? Quite simply, "work" no longer needs to be defined as a place you go. We're witnessing the emergence of a next generation workforce that is always-on and hyper-connected via broadband, with a proliferation of connected devices and access to on-the-go Internet-based applications and cloud-based services that make working from anywhere possible.

The above excerpt from a Reuters article goes on to point out various pluses of telework including reduced carbon emissions from less commuting and mutual benefits for employers (better productivity, lower office costs) and employees (greater work/life balance and job satisfaction). While not mentioned specifically, improved work/life balance could also yield big benefits in lower health care costs by freeing up time for exercise that would otherwise be spent commuting to and from the office.

In order for the virtual workforce to become a reality, workers will need advanced telecommunications infrastructure at their doorsteps that can support videoconferencing and other interactive applications. That means fiber optic connections offering symmetric upload and download speeds and scalability for future growth that is generally not offered by incumbent telco and cable companies.