Networks could see home internet traffic remain high after crisis

In the United States prior to coronavirus, total home internet traffic averaged about 15% on weekdays. But it started growing in mid March, and by late March it had reached about 35%, clearly connected to all the working and learning from home due to stay-at-home orders. This doubling of work-from-home traffic mirrors the events in China. But it’s too soon to tell if home traffic in the United States will increase permanently even after the crisis has passed. “The data suggests remote working will remain elevated in the U.S. for a prolonged period of time,” wrote analysts at Cowen. They point out that this is likely, considering that the United States has a higher mix of service employees compared to China, which has higher numbers of manufacturing employees who must work on location. It may have been a scramble for some employers to get everything set up for people to transition from the office to home. There were quite a few reports of office VPNs initially not being able to handle the new loads. But now that the shift has happened, there’s a good chance that the quarantine experience in the United States will create a permanent work-from-home culture.