Research: The realities of wireless working

Tags:
WiMax,
Wi-Fi,
3G,
HSDPA

Rhetorik ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 24 Aug 2007 16:52 BST

Drivers and restraints of increased mobile-network speed
To understand better what was driving demand for ever-increasing bandwidth and the factors that were currently constraining uptake, we asked respondents to rate lists of possible benefits and barriers of increased network speed in importance to their organisation.

Drivers for increased speed
Figure 6 presents the percentage of respondents noting each driver as "important" or "very important" to their organisation in the implementation of higher-speed networks.

The key drivers identified were related to improved efficiencies in remote working, the increasing size of data files and applications that need to be accessed remotely, and generally increased end-user demand for remote access to a range of applications. All of these were considered important or very important by around 70-75 percent of all respondents, and the first two were of particular importance, rated "very important" by more than one-third of all the organisations we researched.

Other important drivers were related to the trend towards higher numbers of mobile workers, increases in homeworking and the need many enterprises see to reduce business travel for efficiency and/or environmental reasons.

Demand for the use of collaborative applications was considered rather less important as a driver at this time, as was the perceived demand for videoconferencing.