January 20, 2021 Connectify: Internet Issues Causing Lost Productivity

Connectify’s State of Streamergency details the imperfect internet we all face most important online activities and productivity challenges.

Connectify has unveiled the results of its State of Streamergency research, which examined more than 500 consumers’ opinions on how the internet has performed during the pandemic and the streamergencies, or streaming emergencies, that have increasingly disrupted online activities.

A growing need for reliable internet

The importance of having a reliable internet connection continues to grow, as consumers increasingly rely on it for work and other activities.

• The study found that 94% of the more than 500 consumers surveyed feel it is very important to have a reliable internet connection.
• Remote workers are even more likely than the average respondent to feel it’s important, with 100% stating that.
• Yet 88% of consumers experience some degree of nervousness or frustration about their internet connection’s stability, indicating that reliability isn’t quite where it needs to be.

The online activities that matter most

As the internet has taken on a more central role in everything we do, consumers care most about activities that connect them to other people, and feel very frustrated when a streamergency happens during key activities.

• The top three activities respondents most frequently cited that they use their home internet for are: streaming videos, joining video conferences and work.
• The three situations respondents identified as being the most frustrating for the internet to fail: video conferencing, hosting a virtual event and talking to friends and family.

Video conferencing and its imperfections

Video conferencing took the world by storm in 2020 as we migrated to virtual interactions due to the pandemic, but it has also introduced new challenges and frustrations.

• Zoom is the video conferencing provider people are most likely to use, with 72% using the service, followed by Webex, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet.
• Remote workers are even more likely to use Zoom than the average person, with 88% using it.
• The internet has failed or performed poorly for nearly one in three video conferencing users.
• Rural users are disproportionately affected, as they are 66% more likely to believe video conferencing has performed poorly compared to urban dwellers.

The plight of remote workers

Almost half (48%) of employed respondents are currently working from home. Remote workers have stayed as productive as possible during the pandemic, but significant numbers have lost productivity due to unreliable internet. In fact, 68% of respondents believe their productivity has been impacted to some degree due to internet speed or stability issues.

• Generally, workers appreciate their work from home arrangements, with 77% of remote workers feeling satisfied with it
• However, more than one in ten employees feel they have been impacted to a great extent by internet speed and stability issues.
• Remote workers are feeling the pain even more than average, as 77% have been impacted to some degree by those issues compared to the average worker.
• Over half of workers believe their organizations aren’t doing enough to ensure they have fast or stable internet.

“We’ve lived our lives online for the past year, but streamergencies and other internet issues continue to plague our interactions,” said Alex Gizis, CEO of Connectify. “Internet service providers have generally kept us online, but the last mile of an internet connection is what separates a steady and reliable connection from one that repeatedly fails, not to mention Wi-Fi and mobile dead zones people unknowingly pass through. Everyone needs the internet to work perfectly all of the time, to keep working, stay on video conferences, and interact with loved ones.”

Connectify’s channel-bonding VPN and connectivity tool Speedify is designed to stop streamergencies. It’s the only tool that combines all of your internet connections at once, to take advantage of their combined speed and reliability.

From home internet to mobile data and public Wi-Fi networks, almost everyone has more than one readily available internet connection, and Speedify removes the friction of switching between them. It empowers a seamless and secure remote work experience, enhances streaming, and adds resiliency for users who can’t afford to be offline.

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