The performance of functions from home: is there a risk of infrastructure overload?

The transition to remote working models immediately raises questions about the infrastructures and the extent to which there is a real capacity to support massive volumes of citizens in virtual work. The current context of COVID-19 is leading to rapid changes in the number of professionals that each day are working in remote environments, and thus allowing for rapid learning, but also creating an opportunity to test and assess the ability to operate online. The technology already makes remote work possible for many sectors, which allows isolation during the coronavirus containment period, but will broadband support the demand that arises when we have the majority of the population at home?

The general concern occurs with the possibility that residential broadband connections, designed to deal only with night traffic peaks, may not be able to cope with the extra load generated by long days with users using simultaneously all the possibilities offered by the internet.

The European Union, fearing that the servers will not support the increase in the number of users, has asked Netflix as a global provider of movies and television series via streaming to reduce the quality of its videos to save internet bandwidth during the coronavirus pandemic. YouTube also announced that it will reduce the quality of streaming on the European continent to avoid a general crash of its servers.

Even the biggest technology companies have admitted that they are facing adversity with changing traffic patterns. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in an interview that the company was experiencing "overloads" in the use of certain services, including a 100% increase in the number of calls made through the WhatApp and Mensseger apps.

When it comes the access to mobility solutions, the scenario in Portugal seems to be even more delicate. The study Portuguese: digital but not so much? 2019 by Ernest & Young showed that, even under normal conditions, about 25% of Portuguese people still have complaints about the coverage of the mobile network or the speed of internet access. This perception hinders the users' experience and limits the market potential for digital businesses. The ability to access the internet in situations of mobility is one of the pillars of the digital revolution. However, for more than 40% of Portuguese people the cost involved in accessing data is still perceived as a potential obstacle.
 

Graph 1 - Access to mobility solutions - Portuguese perspective

Source: Portuguese: digital but not so much? – Ernest & Young 2019

Some believe that we are prepared to face this overload in the search for internet use. John Grahan, vice president of technology for Cloudfare, an American company that offers web infrastructure, said that while Internet access standards are changing, a global slowdown in access speed has not yet emerged. “It looks like there is enough capacity. Nothing indicates that this will cause problems”. American company Akamai, the largest provider of online content, cloud computing and digital security, reported a 50% increase in global daily internet traffic . But even so, the company does not say it is concerned with the increase in demand.