Bringing the Bacon, From Home: The Benefits of Fiber for Remote Workers
Every year we update dictionaries with the latest words and phrases that have been added to our collective lingo. Thanks to the proliferation of remote work, maybe it’s time we consider a new phrase: "bringing the bacon, from home."
Nearly 60% of workers now have the opportunity to work from home at least one day a week, allowing flexibility and options when it comes to where they work and live.
Alongside the pencils, planners and ergonomic desk chairs (a must-have if you ask us), there’s one underlying piece of infrastructure that people who are able to work from home can’t do without: fiber internet.
In addition to providing the speeds that allow us to work from home in the first place, fiber internet also gives you the power to work from anywhere you call home – from big cities, to suburbs to small rural towns or lakeside communities. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of fiber internet for remote workers.
Exploring a New World of Job Opportunities
Before remote work became popular, nearly everyone tolerated the daily commute. Like it or not, most people were limited to jobs they could reasonably commute to. For workers in small towns and remote areas, this locational stipulation often meant limited mobility in changing jobs and fewer options for work in the first place.
Then, a paradigm shift. As offices shut down in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, people headed home only to realize their home internet was wildly inadequate to support their needs. This was particularly true for call center workers, graphic designers and others requiring plentiful bandwidth.
Today positions with the ability to work remotely are more widely offered than ever before, which can be a great option – as long as reliable high-speed internet is available. With fiber supplying the juice needed to get jobs done from home, a new world of employment opportunities is now available to all no matter where they call home.
The Need for Speed
Jump on your morning video call, upload your presentation for the next meeting, send a few messages to coworkers and have no fear – fiber is here! With lightning fast speeds (that in particular beat out cable’s upload speeds), fiber puts endless possibilities at your fingertips.
Even when you’re experiencing peak traffic in your home, fiber optics won’t overload like cable wires might. More data, more users, more speed – fiber can handle it all while you stream the latest webinar or join that next video conference call (even if you’d rather not).
When it comes to speed, let’s talk about symmetrical download and upload speeds and why both are crucial.
For remote workers, download speeds dictate how efficiently you can surf the internet, how quickly you can stream the latest webinar from your favorite industry source and how long it might take to install a new app you need for work.
On the other hand, upload speeds are vital for video call quality, seamless access to cloud-based work apps like Google Drive, and cutting down the time it takes to upload a file to your computer.
Picture this common scenario: you hop on an afternoon video call to find that your coworker’s sentences are a jumbled mess and their video keeps pausing every 10 seconds. Poor upload speeds are the likely culprit. Or perhaps you want to download a white paper, but the progress bar never seems to move. Blame it on your download speeds.
Symmetrical speeds mean that uploads and downloads can be achieved equally as fast, which allows for better video conferencing, file sharing and streaming for all your work-from-home needs. Huge time savings unlocked!
Jump on the Bandwidth-Wagon
Whether you work in a household with multiple remote workers trying to jump on their next meeting, or your kids are off from school and binging their favorite shows, bandwidth is of the utmost important to the remote worker.
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data being processed at any one time, making it a relevant measure for any remote-working multi-taskers out there. That’s because they’ll need to ensure that they can work even in the presence of other devices. Fiber ensures that households can have dozens of devices online at one time with no negative effect on connection speed.
Fiber connections are also dedicated, meaning you’re not sharing bandwidth with anyone nearby. The connection is yours alone to use, equaling uninterrupted connectivity with no bandwidth limit – even when all your neighbors are streaming TV during peak usage hours.
Hard to Disrupt
Say sayonara to bad weather – or don’t. Honestly, when we have fiber, we can weather any storm. That’s because fiber internet is less vulnerable to weather-related problems than other internet connections.
Fiber optic cables are made from either plastic or glass, making them durable and ready to withstand the tests put forth by any wind, hail, rain, sleet or snow. Additionally, they’re immune to electromagnetic interference that might come from other nearby electronics.
Fiber – like what’s available from Fidium Fiber – provides a reliable connection that will last for years to come.