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54 Percent of Americans Want to Work Remote Regularly After Coronavirus Pandemic Ends, New Poll Show

Hamartia Antidote

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https://www.newsweek.com/54-percent...onavirus-pandemic-ends-new-poll-shows-1501809

A new coronavirus outbreak required companies to shift to remote work and now that people have had the experience of working from home, the majority of them wouldn't mind if they didn't have to go back to the office.

An IBM survey released on Friday found that 54 percent of the 25,000 adults polled would like to be able to primarily work from home and 75 percent would like the option to do it occasionally. Once businesses can reopen, 40 percent of people responded that they feel strongly their employer should offer opt-in remote work options.

More than 1 million people in the U.S. have tested positive for a new coronavirus as of Monday morning, according to a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University. At least 65,735 people have died, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected up to 114,228 people could die by August 4.

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Women wearing protective masks walk along Fifth Avenue during the coronavirus pandemic on Saturday in New York City. The new coronavirus outbreak forced people to move to a remote work environment and the majority of people surveyed in an IBM poll said they would like to continue working remotely once the outbreak subsides.JOHN LAMPARSKI/GETTY
By mid-March, the situation in America had moved past the point of being able to conduct effective contact tracing, thereby requiring the implementation of mitigation measures. Since groups of people gathering in a confined space is a known method for viruses to spread, companies started telling people to work from home and eventually, states mandated the policy.

There are areas of America's economy that can't operate remotely and those businesses that can move online need more than just employees with computers to be successful. Researchers at Tufts University in Massachusetts evaluated 42 countries' abilities to move to remote work based on their robustness of key platforms, ability to facilitate transactions digitally and the resilience of the internet infrastructure to traffic surges.

People in America were concerned if America's infrastructure could withstand moving mass amounts of people out of the office and researchers at Tufts found the United States was largely ready to work from a distance. America scored high in all three categories, but researchers identified a need to improve internet infrastructure to account for traffic surges.

Over the long term, researchers said moves need to be made to increase internet speed and fill gaps between poorer, more rural areas and wealthier, urban and suburban areas.

Some states are starting to reopen retail businesses that were initially deemed non-essential and forced to close. Other states are still devising plans of how their reopening should look and returning to an office will depend on individual states' decisions.

In New York City, the epicenter of the outbreak, sending people back to work in their office would force people back onto public transportation en masse. Proving difficult to social distance on a train during rush hours, Tom Prendergast, former chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, suggested that businesses stagger work hours during an interview with Cheddar. By moving away from the traditional 9-5 workday, businesses could help reduce the crowded conditions that are all too common on the subway.

With the potential to spread the virus, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo took unprecedented action and announced the subway would close from 1 a.m. until 5 a.m. beginning on May 6 so it could be cleaned daily.

Once restrictions are lifted and people can go back to an office, it's possible some people might see a shift in their commute. In a Gallup poll released on Friday, 52 percent of managers polled said they will allow employees to work from home more often because of the experience with the coronavirus outbreak.
 
Verizon rocking for me. 4K videos no problem. 50 Person video conference. No problem.

https://www.highspeedinternet.com/resources/fastest-internet-providers

The Fastest Internet Providers 2020

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According to our research, Google Fiber has the fastest average internet speeds in the US, followed closely by Verizon Fios. These two fiber internet providers have impressive upload speeds, download speeds, and ping rates.

We used all those metrics to calculate a weighted speed score, which you can read more about in the methodology section further down. The main thing you need to know as you read this report is that the score represents the provider’s internet speed performance, but it isn’t actually an internet speed.

RCN, Hotwire Communications, and Xfinity also average respectable speeds. But these companies have a disadvantage in the form of asymmetric upload speeds. That means that the internet service providers (ISPs) generally give customers much slower upload speeds than the advertised download speeds. It’s usually about 10%, so a 100 Mbps connection would have only 10 Mbps of upload bandwidth.

Many cable and DSL internet plans have asymmetric speeds, and that upload speed cap definitely affected our weighted speed scores. You can see that in the gap between mainly fiber internet providers and mainly cable or DSL internet providers in this and all the fastest regional provider lineups.

We chose to narrow down our list of the fastest internet providers in the US by filtering out the providers that are available only in small areas. Providers with service in at least five states were under consideration for the nationwide list, but you can see more about the superstar smaller ISPs in their respective regional lists.
 
Sounds legit

Verizon rocking for me. 4K videos no problem. 50 Person video conference. No problem.

I have Verizon Fios as well and its atrocious. It's so bad that I end up using LTE cellular most of the time because its faster.
 
Sounds legit



I have Verizon Fios as well and its atrocious. It's so bad that I end up using LTE cellular most of the time because its faster.

Wow running your desktop on cellular sounds like a last gasp option.
 
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Wow running your desktop on cellular sounds like a last gasp option.

Yeah its pretty much last resort option. I don't know if internet traffic in my area is just heavier these days or what, I don't recall having this issue before people started working from home. But sometimes WiFi can be so slow its basically unusable.

I don't think ISP's are ready to handle increase in internet traffic associated with Work from Home (WFH)
 
Yeah its pretty much last resort option. I don't know if internet traffic in my area is just heavier these days or what, I don't recall having this issue before people started working from home.

Try using a direct wire instead of WIFI.

With everybody on I get 600Mbps down Speedtest.
Before the work-at-home it was 1Gbps down.
 
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They should be given the option to work from home but should be paid less than workers commuting to their work places who cannot work from home due to the nature of their work.
 
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