Into month three of lockdown in South Africa, the larger IP transit providers are reporting 30+% increase in traffic largely due to remote working environments. Our own network across the African continent has experienced growth in line (if not slightly higher) that the 30% average we are seeing reported during this period, as the world moves to rely on virtual work environments. Thankfully, the pandemic starting in other markets first gave us some time to prepare for the increased volume and challenging work conditions.

Internet service providers have seen an upward trend in end users requiring more speed, specifically upload speeds. Home networks that were not intended to support large volumes of traffic, but rather were installed for social and entertainment needs, have been impacted the most.

In a typical family environment, under stay-at-home regulations, learners are accessing classes whilst parents are drawing on the same bandwidth for corporate work requirements such as bandwidth hungry video conferencing applications.

Nick Soper, Co-founder and Managing Director of Cape Town-based ISP, Atomic Access, told us: “We suggested customers change their line speed to one that has at least 10 Mbps upload capacity, and if they have more than one person working from home we recommend 20 Mbps.

“We also let people know they can downgrade again once this is all over.”

It’s this kind of flexibility and approach to the dramatic market demands that will assist ISPs keep up with increased connectivity and content requirements in these challenging times.

We are proud of the work that the Workonline team has done to support ISPs both commercially and technically to navigate this new world.

Reach out to us if you would like to know more on bizdev<at>workonline.africa or call one of the team on +27 21 200 9000.