Telecommuters get no lovin' from their ISPs, study finds

Gas prices are soaring, roads are congested and you've gotten kind of hooked on Days of Our Lives. Sounds like it's time to telecommute.

But good luck trying to use your virtual private network, or VPN, while sending e-mail and surfing the Web. According to a Forrester Research study released Wednesday, telecommunication companies don't focus on consumers who work from home. As a result, those workers suffer slower Web speeds, slower customer service and security issues they otherwise might not face if they were working at the office.

"Because home workers' telecommunication needs are not strictly personal nor precisely business-based, providers have a difficult time creating a product strategy for these consumers," analyst Sally M. Cohen wrote in the report.

They should start thinking about consumers who telecommute (Cohen calls them "prosumers"). According to Forrester, 41% of adults who use a computer at work also work at home after-hours. About 9% of online consumers telecommute regularly, and 22.8 million consumers run a business from home.

Cohen listed a few features telecommuters might need:

• More bandwith. About half of enterprises in the U.S. and Europe have virtual private networks that can be accessed from home, but logging in with low bandwith can be next to impossible.
• Better customer care. The last thing telecommuters want to do when they're rushing to file a report is wait in a customer-service line or yell at voice prompts.
• Increased security. Telecommuting can create privacy concerns for employers and employees.

I asked AT&T, Charter, Time Warner and Verizon what services they offer for people who telecommute. The answer: nothing special. But consumers who pay a bit more for Internet might be all set anyway. Verizon's FiOS, only available in some areas, transmits at speeds up to 50 megabits per second. Its DSL goes up to 7 megabits. Time Warner's top package transmits at 6 megabits per second, although some areas get service as fast as 10 megabits per second. AT&T's DSL and U-Verse (also only available in some areas), offer the same speeds as Time Warner.

For now, telecommuters in Glendale, Burbank, Long Beach and Riverside have it best: those with Charter Communications can get speeds as fast as 16 megabits per second as well as a free anti-virus and security package to boot.

-- Alana Semuels

Semuels, a Times staff writer, covers marketing and the L.A. tech scene.

Photo by Stanley Leary / Associated Press

Comments

[Mike L]

As someone that works from home on occasion and in involved in the technology of our office, the biggest challenge we see for our staff is that without better upload speeds we can not work from home. Downloads are fast but just about everything a worker pulls down needs to go back to the office when they are done and puny uploads like 768k don't cut it. The other aspect is that our VOIP phone PBX system works great but if you have lots of latency and poor uploads, it drops out.

I am lucky with a 5M/5M FIOS line at my house and dont have issues now, but with Cable it was terrible and I cant even imagine doing this with DSL.

We need synchronous speeds to work well!!!!

[Sandee Tisdale]

This is one of our favorite topics at the Sloan Network - and one that is constantly evolving. As flexible shcedules become more common, work is often taken home in small bits or in large chunks. How families manage this new arrangement can make or break the family dynamics. Technology, while allowing for a certain amount of mobility, can also make it more frustrating to work virutally if things are not functioning properly. Check out our blog on telecommuting for more info, too: http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/blog/category/telework

[LIza Loop]

Slow internet is a problem for tenants in old buildings as well as home telecommuters. That's why we started Fiber High, a shared cubicle farm sitting directly on Palo Alto's optical fiber net. It's midway between working from home and having a normal office.

Our vision has been to provide a communal space individuals and very small companies can use to upload and download at 40 Mbps or better speeds. Some tenants will want to work full time from their cubes. Others may share cubicles and just bring in files to transmit periodically. Until we have full fiber to the home (FTTH), this may be a concept worth replicating.

There are many green advantages to having neighborhood high speed internet centers. By staying small, in square footage and number of servers (under 50) collocated there, collaboratives modeled after Fiber HIgh can occupy a normal suite in a strip mall or a corner of a convenience store without need for special air conditioning or upgraded electrical service. The center can redistribute internet signal to homes over copper or via line-of-sight antenna faster than
DSL or cable while still maintaining a reasonable cost to the users. The telecommuter can work off line at home or at slower speeds most of the time. If there is an online meeting or a large file to be transmitted, the user can walk to the local center and work there for a few hours. It sure beats sitting in freeway traffic.

Email Liza@fiberhigh.com if you would like to discuss how to organize an internet center for your neighborhood.