Rob Seymour, Marketing Director, VoIPstudio, sat down with me to discuss the past nine months of dealing with the novel Coronavirus pandemic as a business communications provider. He said the industry faced a ton of setbacks, but to balance things out, those agile enough i.e. those with the right set of cloud-based technologies, have often been fast to react. This is when it comes to getting workers up-and-running from home without any significant gaps in the business process.
“Continuity is no longer something people use as a buzzword – it is a necessity, and we have watched that play out on a grand scale over the past nine months”
He added, noting there’s still some refining to do to this process, but kudos to those who played a part in this transition. Seymour said the company has seen more users working remotely than in the past, which is why working in a fixed location seems to be a thing of the past. He told me that many of VoIPstudios’ customers said they would never return to a traditional office setting – even after COVID passes.
This could create a heavier call for and reliance on, more durable underlying communications infrastructure and tools like PBXs, according to Seymour. “Mobile PBXs have been helpful to lean on over the past nine months and have proven essential for those working from home as well as made their jobs a lot easier.” PBX ‘done right,’ as Seymour puts it – can add a lot of worth to a business, which is why Seymour said such capacities are going to remain eminent moving forward.
This includes features like true presence, call routing, and call handling, to name a few. For remote workers, such characteristics are invaluable, according to Seymour. He added, VoIPstudio has seen a boost in downloads of the Android/ iPhone versions of its mobile softphone app, and there are more views on the provider’s tutorials surrounding mobile setup. Difficulties such as weak broadband could get remedied with the execution of WebRTC-based technology, according to Seymour. VPNs are another story:
“VPNs come with their own set of issues, and they can slow down activities the technology should enable with little-to-no concerns”
This includes video conferencing, file sharing, syncing, etc. Seymour added this also necessitates that broadband providers should act as well. He argues that it could benefit companies to offer bulk deals to enterprises with the promise of quality service and high up-time for their employees. “No one wants to have glitchy meetings because of poor connectivity.”
At this point, Seymour argues, consumer broadband providers must step up their game and think more forward with how packages get bundled. He remarked these packages could concentrate on business traffic from the hours of 9-5 then drop back in the evening. This, he contends, could be a resolution to an annoying predicament. The quandary, as he sees it, is that there are a greater number of users on most broadband networks with children and parents working from home on a system with already limited capabilities.
