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NEED
Ten years ago only the largest companies could afford to provide remote access support for their home-based and remote workers. Most of these were based on dial-up lines using the telephone network. Connections were notoriously slow and expensive; especially when dialing from abroad. Such schemes were fine for synchronizing with the corporate mail server or downloading sales materials when on the road. But they were never able to provide the remote worker with all the IT facilities available to the central office based worker. But that has now all changed. The widespread availability of low cost broadband connections combined with the ubiquity of the Internet means that even the smallest company can provide their home and remote workers with full network support as if they were locally connected to the corporate network. And not just for data: advances in Internet Telephony mean that the Internet can also be used to connect remote workers to the company voice network to reduce the cost of voice calls both within the company and for external calls.
A study1 funded by the European Commission has shown that teleworking has positive advantages for companies and their employees.
In particular the report concluded that: "Broadband and other advanced communication technologies are allowing higher volumes of data to be transported to and from people's homes. This can mean that tasks requiring frequent access to large files can be done from home."
1 Is Teleworking Sustainable? - An Analysis of its Economic, Environmental and Social Impacts, 2004, www.sustel.org
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