Broadband chiefs: We can cope in crisis

BROADBAND providers yesterday reassured firms that Britain’s dated digital infrastructure will support millions of people working from home during the coronavirus outbreak.

Many companies have already asked staff to work from home, and it is expected this will extend to the majority of workers by next week or the week after.

But there are fears the country’s domestic broadband network is not big or modern enough to manage such unprecedented daytime demand, as millions of homes are served by dated copper wires that supply only slow connections. This year one international survey rated the quality of home internet packages in Britain at 81st in the world and 23rd in Europe due to the sluggish speeds available to many users.

The biggest internet provider, BT, said its system – which most other firms also use – will handle the expected upsurge.

BT said it is designed to deal with evening peaks when users stream and download content. These spurts are up to ten times the ordinary daytime demand – so the company said it could host increased daytime use.

It comes amid the first evidence that large numbers of people are no longer turning up at regular workplaces. Railway company

Govia Thameslink, which runs many commuter lines into London, said fewer people were travelling by train. Accurate numbers on commuter travel are not yet available.

Just 8 per cent of homes – around 2.5million – are thought to have modern fibre internet connections. The rest rely on slow links because their internet connections are provided via old copper wiring.

Openreach, a subsidiary of BT, owns the system which connects homes to central networks. Its lines are used by almost all other internet providers, such as TalkTalk, Sky and Vodafone.

Virgin, which runs its own separate fibre cable network, said it had carried out an appraisal of its system to check it was up to potential coronavirus demand. A Virgin Media spokesman said the company was ‘well prepared for our people and customers to work from home’. Matthew Fell of the business pressure group the CBI said he was confident most people would be able successfully to work from home.

But he said that ‘the increase in flexible working will no doubt place demands on existing networks through a spike in video calls and so on’ and that there would be ‘challenges’ in rural areas with poor links.

Caroline Normand of consumer group Which? said earlier this week that ‘substandard 4G and broadband continues to be a huge problem for many people around the country’.