It has been hard to escape the news about how most of the world is now working from home during this stressful time. Whether its issues with connectivity, concerns about data security or just funny memes of people dealing with the fun of small children in their home office, it is top of mind for everyone.
Here are four reasons why using cellular data can eliminate some of the issues:
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You aren’t competing with your kids for bandwidth on your home Wi-Fi network
Kids of all ages are heavy users of the Internet and most of their chosen activities are very data-intense. Whether they are watching a Netflix show, the latest video from their favourite Youtuber or talking about how bored they while live streaming on Instagram, they are heavily taxing your home Wi-Fi. When you combine this with the fact that many ISPs are seeing huge volumes in most residential neighbourhoods, you are likely to have issues during your video chat with your customers.
While cellular data networks do not have an infinite amount of bandwidth available, they are not as congested at this time (as most people are connecting their cell phones to a landline-based Wi-Fi network). Today’s 4G networks are more than capable of providing a great platform for video streaming and other vital activities for your work.
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They offer a great back-up in the event of an outage to your main wired Internet connection
Whether you are working from home or the office, Internet connectivity is something we need to have working at all times now. Don’t get me wrong, it was always important, but it is vital when most of your suppliers, customers and employees are only accessible online.
Cellular data connections have always been a vital way to back up your Internet connectivity, but they are more vital now than ever. Most solutions allow for a seamless fallback to cellular connectivity in the event of an outage and provide access to the Internet in the unfortunate event of relocation of an office.
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You need to keep your communications secure, even when employees are remote.
While all corporate and government-based data needs to be protected, there is some data that is even more vital to keep secure. Think health care, legal, scientific, military and other confidential data. These are employees that you would normally not allow to work from home during normal times, but these are not normal times.
In an ideal scenario, you would have your IT teams go out to their homes and set up particular equipment to allow them to work from home. However, your IT teams don’t have the time to do this, so what do you do?
Cellular gateways have the ability to solve these issues. First, they can be set up with the same security parameters by your IT team via scripts, ensuring that they are both set up quickly and all data is secured. Next, they can be locked down to only transmit data to/from your secure server (and not to access the public Internet). Third, they can be set up in your employee’s homes in seconds, by the employee themselves. Finally, they can be returned after this crisis is over and stored for any future crisis use.
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In many cases, you may choose to “cut the cable” when this is all over
Many businesses have discovered that the benefits of using cellular connectivity are so great that they are using them in place of traditional landline services, even when landlines are available. This is often the case for remote connectivity to key devices, for temporary and seasonal offices and for low-bandwidth sites.
So, while you may use the cellular gateway for a temporary or failover solution, many will choose to cancel the main Internet connection when this is all said and done.
Novotech can supply the technology you need to work from home, see our full lineup of products or talk to one of our specialists today.