Work From Home Drives Fiber’s Importance

Work-from-home (WFH) and collaboration trends jump-started by the pandemic aren’t going away, according to the latest Futurum Research survey, with large businesses continuing to support WFH in various degrees regardless of the industry. The organization surveyed 525 key decision-makers across important industry verticals, identifying which businesses had an official WFH policy today and those providing support on an informal basis without an established policy. “Almost two thirds are still improvising how they’re going to best approach this new task post-pandemic,” said Ron Westfall, Research Director & Senior Analyst at Futurum Research. “The workforce is jazzed by the opportunity to work more from home, something that I think is improving productivity.” Fiber is desired by businesses because it is more secure than other media and provides symmetrical and faster connections than other alternatives, making the WFH experience both better for the user and less problematic for the organization. Westfall said organizations need to prioritize full fiber use cases to optimize WFH and collaboration implementations while service providers need to prioritize full fiber benefits to secure more WFH business, including the ability to ensure consistent WFH experiences as well as differentiating fiber from other broadband alternatives.

[Doug Mohney is director of content at Connect2 Communications.]