What benefits does broadband offer to business?

Disability Rights Commission

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) is adopting broadband to allow more of its staff to work from home, and to promote accessibility and flexibility in the organisation.

The DRC's goal is 'a society where all disabled people can participate fully as equal citizens', and the organisation, set up in 2000, is keen to set a good example by using technology to advance a working environment that enables equality of opportunity.

'About a third of our employees have impairments such as hearing and sight disabilities,' says Julian Massel, head of IT at the DRC. 'We need accessible technologies to ensure independence and equality in the workplace. We have a lot of home workers. The advent of home broadband will enable them to have access to the office systems as if they were in the office, with the same performance and no degradation of service.'

The DRC uses an IP-based virtual private network (VPN) installed by Cable & Wireless, underpinning a unified messaging service that integrates an IP telephony system with its email software.

Voice messages can be forwarded as email attachments and played as audio files on a computer, while text-to-speech functionality allows staff to hear email messages via voicemail. Such features are only accessible from a home environment over a broadband connection, as dial-up cannot recreate the full functionality of the office.

'The powerful bandwidth of broadband means staff will be able to use a "soft" IP phone on their laptop at home,' says Massel. 'Soft phones don't work on dial-up because they use too much bandwidth.'

Using soft phones at home means workers with visual impairments in particular will benefit as screen reader software reads out text. Broadband also means Massel can consider home desktop videoconferencing in the future.

'It's something we'll look at,' he says. 'Videoconferencing would give us the flexibility of face-to-face meetings without having to leave home.'

So far, Massel and a network manager have piloted access to the corporate system over broadband, and they have been happy enough with the results to roll it out to 30 of 200 DRC staff starting this month.

Massel will use broadband connections already installed by employees for personal use to connect to the DRC and calculate how to split costs, depending on the ratio of work to personal use.

In cases where home workers do not have a broadband connection, Massel is looking at installing very fast speeds.

'We'll consider ISPs offering high bandwidth speeds,' he says. '1Mbit/s is adequate for what we need, but higher bandwidths would improve performance.'

Massel is adamant that every member of staff working from home will use DRC equipment for work-related activities, to maintain security.

'We're very keen that employees should work on DRC-provided laptops or PDAs. Otherwise we can't guarantee security features, such as updated anti-virus software and encryption,' he says.

Massel will configure remote access to the DRC's VPN to give home users the IT support they need.

'Broadband allows us to remotely access employees' PCs so we can carry out regular checks and automate updates at certain times. With dial-up, downloading patches could take up to four hours,' he says.

Massel adds that cutting costs was not the driving force behind adopting broadband, but he believes it could help reduce overheads. Broadband's most important business benefits for the DRC are gains in productivity, accessibility and flexible working practices, he says.

Elyo

Energy efficiency company Elyo specialises in saving money for its clients, and is applying its efficiency ethos internally by using broadband to reduce operating costs and increase productivity.

The company, which manages energy use for major organisations such as Kodak and Rolls-Royce, has UK teams at more than 50 locations, with some staff having been based at customer sites for many years.

Pre-broadband, this situation meant a hefty data communications bill. At the 20 largest sites, bills were running in excess of £16,000 a month. Since rolling out a broadband virtual private network (VPN), that figure has fallen to £3,000.

'Our sites were on ISDN lines at speeds of 64Kbit/s,' says Elyo IT manager Stephen Waite. 'It was very slow and costly. We knew broadband was becoming widespread and wanted a cost-efficient way of transferring data. But only 12 out of the 20 major sites could have broadband.'

Despite some companies suggesting another ISDN solution when Elyo put the contract out to tender, it opted for an ADSL system from Kingston Communications, and is into the second year of a £120,000, three-year contract.

Local loop unbundling has exceeded Waite's expectations and speeded up his projected rate for achieving broadband access. 'We expected to be putting in broadband at about one or two sites every month, but it's in the region of five or six,' he says. 'Some of those sites were costing nearly £4,000 a month, but now each broadband site costs about £50.'

With such low costs, remote working is flourishing and all of Elyo's executive team regularly work from home.

'Broadband has given us the opportunity to let more people work from home,' says Waite. 'Dial-up was so slow, it was easier for people to come into the office. We now have 35 home workers, with four or five getting broadband every month. They are more productive as there are fewer interruptions than in the office and they don't have to commute.'

Another broadband bonus is the reduced administrative overheads. 'Our department is able to work more efficiently because we don't have a constant barrage of users complaining that the system isn't fast enough, data can't be downloaded and things aren't working,' he says.

But some sites in mid-Wales and remote parts of Scotland have no broadband yet.

'BT tells us that by the end of next year, 98 per cent of the country will have access, but you can guarantee the two per cent that can't is where we are,' says Waite.

At these sites, Elyo has explored a wireless broadband option, but rejected it because, 'we'd be struggling to get a connection that supports a VPN without reducing the speed of data transfer', says Waite. 'Speeds would be even less than with ISDN and we need to improve the service, not make it worse.'

The favoured option is to use 3G cards, and Elyo will conduct a trial with Orange at a couple of sites next month.

Despite these remaining pockets of broadband unavailability, widespread rollout of the technology has allowed Elyo to adopt more efficient applications. It has changed its Unix-based finance system to a web-based platform and is considering a web-based planned maintenance system for engineers to use on sites, so they can spedily access maintenance data for boilers and machinery.

Broadband security remains a priority. 'We're conducting a detailed security audit,' says Waite, who is also looking at how workers log into Elyo's VPN. This focus is necessary, as Waite wants to continue to make use of remote working and capitalising on its broadband investment.

See also:

Animal charity upgrades its infrastructure

National veterinary organisation switches to broadband  27 Apr 2005

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