Household internet activity is expected to change dramatically as Covid-19 sees increasing numbers of people working and studying from home as they social distance and self-isolate.
Photo: 123RF
More than half of New Zealanders have the ability to work from home, research from Internet NZ shows, and, in a bid to prepare themselves if a major outbreak of Covid-19 were to occur here, some of the country's biggest employers, including telecommunications giant Vodafone, have teams doing so already.
Tomorrow, Wellington College will hold a trial-run of learning from home, as public health experts urge the government to close all schools to stop the virus's spread.
While countries hit hard by the virus have seen home internet usage skyrocket, experts said this had caused problems for some. Paul Spain, futurist and chief executive of Gorilla Technologies, said this was the case in China, where people working from home struggled with slow internet speeds due to overloaded networks.
"As a whole lot of people were forced to stay at home, that really did put some pressure on their internet services, and people trying to work from home were really impacted as things slowed down a lot," he said.
Spain said that was unlikely to happen in New Zealand as the majority of homes had high-quality fibre or fast, fixed mobile internet services.
In September 2019, there were 880,000 New Zealand homes and businesses connected to the fibre broadband network, and 188,000 fixed wireless connections, according to the Commerce Commission.
Telecommunications infrastructure company Chorus said its fibre and copper networks "have the capacity to handle a mass uptake of teleworking as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic".
Vodafone's infrastructure director Tony Baird said the company's networks were well positioned to keep up with increased demands resulting from people working from home. In some European countries, the company saw usage surge by up to 50 percent as people shifted to working from home.
Meanwhile, internet service provider Spark said it would monitor its network "to manage traffic and ensure a good experience for all its customers as it makes these changes". The company also announced it would not charge users who went over existing data limits for the next 60 days.
Spain said that in households with multiple people using the internet via a single Wifi outlet, users may experience slower speeds as bandwidth was spread more thinly.
"It'll depend on the work they're doing - if you're someone that is editing video or audio and is dealing with big files, then if you're having to share your internet bandwidth with a bunch of other people who are putting a heavy load on it… you might find it somewhat frustrating compared to an internet connection you might have in the office."
But Spain said cybersecurity issues were more likely to arise as a result of people working from home, especially for those not using a work computer. A home computer is less likely to be set up as securely as a company machine, he said, meaning it could be vulnerable to hackers or could be riddled with malware.
PwC cyber security leader Adrian van Hest said while businesses scrambled to set up staff with remote access, they might forgo security precautions in favour of function and speed. Van Hest said it was hard to know how secure a company's systems were until they were put to the test.
"No matter how much preparation you think you've done, until it's done in the circumstance where everyone is working remotely, you don't know how it's going to fare. There are capacity issues and constraints that only surface when something is tested in the real world."
Spain recommended people trial working from home as soon as possible, to iron out any issues that could arise.
