COVID-19's impact will evolve the telecommunications industry

by Mike Robuck

Change is in the air for the telecommunications sector as vendors and service providers grapple with the fallout from COVID-19. While it may be too soon to carve all of the changes into granite, it does seem as though the industry is headed towards the dawning of a new era.

The lessons learned to date are that, for the most part, service providers were largely well equipped to meet the 30% to 40% increase in bandwidth demand on their networks as millions of employees and students became home bound.

As some carriers noted, the planned capacity increases for an entire year were reached during the height of the coronavirus pandemic due to shelter-in-place and lockdown policies. Adding more capacity going forward is top of mind for most service providers.

But now that service providers, businesses and other organizations know that their employees can work from home (WFH) how many will return to the office space once the coronavirus restrictions loosen up across the board? World Wide Technology's Neil Anderson, senior director of network solutions, expects a hybrid-working environment to emerge.