Would you prefer faster roads or faster broadband?

How are you getting on with the great work from home experiment? I have worked from home for most of my career so it is nothing new for me but I realise it will be a novelty for most of you.

Your experience will vary greatly depending on if you have young kids or not. With our 4-year-old, I find it is next to impossible to get any work done while homeschooling and childminding. Whatever teachers get paid they should double it and give them free hot tubs for the staff room as a bonus.

Some have a fantasy that this could be a new reality but at some stage in the next year or two normal life shall resume and you will all have to make your way back into your place of work. I personally think we will end up with more flexible work patterns with a hybrid of working from the office and working from home where possible.

I can’t imagine there any many people reading this who miss sitting in traffic on the Westlink for 2 hours a day. I think it is a reasonable assumption that even when we do go back to normal life, traffic levels should fall if some people work from home for part of the week or take public transport more.

I was surprised to find that Broadband speeds are pretty decent in Northern Ireland. From the 2019 Ofcom report:

  • Two hundred and thirty-two thousand homes (31%) in Northern Ireland now have access to full-fibre broadband connections; over 160,000 more than last year. These connections can deliver much higher download speeds, of up to 1 Gbit/s and are also more reliable than older, copperbased broadband. Among the four UK nations, Northern Ireland (31%) has the highest availability of full fibre services, compared to England (10%), Scotland (8%) and Wales (12%).

  • Superfast broadband (at least 30 Mbit/s), is available to 89% of premises in Northern Ireland, the same as last year.

  • The average download speed delivered to premises in Northern Ireland is 55 Mbit/s. This has increased from 43 Mbit/s in 2018 and reflects increasing availability of faster broadband services.

  • Average monthly broadband data use in Northern Ireland has gone up from 240 GB per connection in 2018, to 322 GB in 2019 – the equivalent of watching up to four hours of HD video content a day.

  • The deployment of wireless home broadband from BT/EE on its mobile network has further reduced the number of premises that cannot get a decent broadband service. We now estimate that as few as 20,000 homes in Northern Ireland should be unable to access a decent fixed broadband service, subject to confirmation of individual premises coverage. From March 2020, those homes unable to get a decent connection will be able to request one from BT through the broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO).

  • Good 4G services from all four operators are available (outdoor) across 75% of the Northern Ireland landmass while voice services from all four operators are available (outdoor) to 86% of the Northern Ireland landmass.

  • 61% of premises and 52% of major roads in Northern Ireland have good indoor / in-vehicle 4G coverage from all four operators.

  • Voice services (indoor) from all four operators are available in 80% of premises in Northern Ireland and 72% of major roads (in-vehicle).

So hopefully most of you are getting a decent signal but as more of us video call and stream the network will need to keep improving to keep up with demand.

And what about our roads? Well, it is no surprise to any drivers that some of our road network is in bad shape so I suppose the answer to my own question is we need investment in all our Infrastructure – roads, water, broadband everything really. I can see a massive investment in Infrastructure in the South as the European Central Bank has basically authorised unlimited funds and infrastructure projects are an obvious way to kickstart the economy. In the North, I am not sure how it will work out with the UK leaving Europe, but the UK can raise funds on the global bond should they need too.

This post is a bit rambly as I have a four-year-old distracting me that makes it difficult to focus, but the point I am trying to get at is the Great Pause is an opportunity to reevaluate our priorities as a society. It is also clear that the state is back, after decades of letting the market run wild only the power and might of state governments can get us out of this mess. Ironically, Boris Johnson and his Conservative government will oversee the most significant state investment programme since the post-war Labour government.

on the road” by Giacomo Carena is licensed under CC BY-ND

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