Home workers and internet speed

Working from home, once a perk, has become the norm for white-collar toilers. As countries lock down due to coronavirus, workers need access to fast, reliable internet connections. Korea and China have invested heavily in fibre and 5G wireless networks, but many homes in Britain still rely on a cranky local network of copper wires. Can these cope with surging demand from home workers?

UK telecom giant BT Group says Britain’s network is up to the job. It had better be. The group dragged its feet upgrading a network on which communications rely. Internet connectivity can be absent or notoriously slow outside Britain’s big cities. Bandwidth is weak. Former BT CEO and soccer fan Gavin Patterson bet billions in shareholder capital on English soccer media rights. Current CEO Philip Jansen, who has contracted Covid-19, will have catching up to do when he returns to work.

Using copper wires to connect homes to the network means slower internet connections. Full-fibre connections are coming, but the pace in Britain has been slow, with BT favouring short-term fixes. In Korea and Japan, more than 80% of fixed-line connections qualify as highspeed fibre. In Britain, that figure was just a tenth last year, one of the lowest in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

One potential snag is the data flow that home working requires. Video conferencing needs greater bandwidth for data submission, say critics. They claim networks maximise downloads rather than uploads. Download speeds are typically seven times faster than upload speeds. BT says daytime traffic is only a quarter of evening broadband usage and systems are coping easily. Customers will hope these assurances prove better founded than Patterson’s growth plan. Otherwise, struggling businesses will suffer even greater disruption. /London, March 19

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