“Traffic” Hits Home: The Rise of Digital Congestion Amid COVID-19

Have we swapped physical traffic jams for digital pileups? Urban congestion has been an issue in the U.S. for decades, and as millions now work, learn, and play at home in an effort to socially distance, our roads are finally free-flowing again. However, the traffic has not disappeared. It has digitized.

Welcome to the new gridlock: digital congestion.

Can You See Me Now? The New Measure of Network Reliability.

Imagine this scenario. You need the input of your coworkers on a high-priority presentation. You’ll be presenting a dry run from your new work-from-home environment. You have three tools at your disposal: a microphone, a webcam, and screen share.

You know how to use these tools to communicate and elicit feedback using the right prompts. “Do you see where my cursor is?”; “Rachel, please share notes at the end on this next visualization.”; “Dan, it looks like you have a question…”.

But after 15 minutes of choppy dialogue, frozen screens, “can you repeat that,” and “I just lost you.” you are forced to email a static copy of what should be a dynamic presentation. You switch your screen sharing and video off so you can dedicate your bandwidth to VOIP only, taking two of your most valuable communication tools away.

You lean on verbalization alone, hoping that your colleagues follow along as you call out slide numbers, charts, and figures.

This is the new reality for millions today. Reports from Ookla (the company behind speedtest.net) show an almost 60% increase in the volume of speed tests, likely from users trying to troubleshoot and navigate these frustrating scenarios.

Managing Digital Congestion, Now and Later

Working, learning, and socializing remotely have become the new norm as we distance ourselves to stop the spread of COVID-19. The average daily broadband data usage per user in the United States was up 41.4% during office hours in early March compared with January.

Source: Statista

Now, with the spike in traffic being far from temporary, we must look at how we can ensure our communities are able to connect. Managing this demand will fall to multiple parties — Internet service providers (ISPs), platform and application providers, government entities, and at times, users.

• Self-regulation: As communications providers expand and improve their quality of service, citizens have a social responsibility to lessen the load through self-regulation. This is not to help providers and the companies using their tools profit while we sacrifice, but rather to make sure that those who are working in critical fields like healthcare, medical research, and government administration have the access they need to serve our communities. Many providers like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon are reducing video streaming quality by default, but there are far more taxing activities than video streaming at our fingertips today. Live streaming is highly demanding from a bandwidth perspective due to the way the data is individually packaged. Much like our responsibly to self-regulate our social interactions, we must also be judicious with the way we connect. Before live streaming a nature walk, workout, birthday, or even something as well-intentioned as a lecture for a class, remember that there are healthcare providers also trying to conference with patients.
• Communications provider responsibility: ISPs report increased at-home internet consumption of up to 90% in countries such as COVID-ravaged Italy, and certain categories like VPN up as much as 160%. Providers are having varying success dealing with the demand depending on location. Some European countries had to take proactive measures to avoid a failure. Others like AT&T and providers of supporting services like Cloudflare are finding their operations in the U.S. to be handling traffic relatively well. However, it’s only wise to assume many who enjoy the new-found freedom of working remotely will likely continue in at least a part-time if not full-time capacity even after COVID-19 subsides. This being said, ISP infrastructure upgrades must be made not just to meet sustained increases in demand, but also to meet the consumer needs that existed in the market well before COVID-19 emerged. Our networks have advanced from the first T1 backbone in 1987 to the OC-192 (optic) connections of today, yet only 50% of the U.S. are expected to have access to fiber by the year 2025. Further, GSMA estimates $1.1 trillion in 5G investments globally over the next five years, with U.S. companies devoting 87% of Cap-Ex to 5G. A positive move without question, but one that needs reliable support, such as fiber, to take full effect. With an increasingly mobile workforce, the accelerated rollout of both technologies will be key. A beacon of light for employees working from home in the meantime will be Wi-Fi 6. It is designed to perform better in dense urban environments, accommodate the growing number of devices connected within a household, and limit dead zones throughout the home. The rate of adoption will depend on the pace hardware providers roll out with compatible devices and how quickly consumers upgrade equipment.
• Platform and application responsibility: Providers of communications tools play the second most pivotal role after ISPs. Even the fastest internet connection won’t help you to fare better on a platform without proper server capacity, load balancing capabilities, and an optimized means of data exchange. And, unrelated to performance but equally as important, is security. As an example, Zoom saw a decline in its stock price due to reports of security concerns following incidences of so-called Zoombombing and charges the company shares personal user data with Facebook. The price then quickly rebounded (currently up 80% on the year) once the company addressed the issue by better adapting the enterprise platform for personal use. While these are by no means new areas of focus for providers, they are critical to monitor and improve.
• Government responsibility: Government-regulated internet has been a hot topic of debate in recent years. Rather than delve into the world of pro- and anti-stances around topics like net neutrality, suffice it to say that governments will play a vital role in ensuring laws and regulations are structured in a way that encourages innovation and does not hinder the infrastructure expansion or the development of new technology.

Don’t Let the Silver Lining Fade

An empowered remote workforce is one more thing to add to the list of areas business leaders can focus on if we are ever to turn learnings from the COVID-19 crisis into lasting positive outcomes for business operations, public health, quality of life, and the appreciation and protection of our environment.

Businesses will emerge from this pandemic with either an enhanced or damaged opinion of technology investments. It should be interesting to see how those with positive views continue to invest in technology.

The question is, will we learn from this temporary “new normal” to create an even better normal moving forward? We must alleviate the daily struggle (and environmental impact) of physical traffic, without allowing the solution to become another problem.