My employer has been using WebEx, a decision beyond my control and given some of the experiences set forth in this thread, a decision that caused me concern. It has not been a seamless experience, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how well it has worked so far.

Correct - While I use Teams at work, I did join a Teams call with another organization last night from my cell (which does not have teams) just by dialing the access number and passcode.

I forget how long we are into this (When did it start? What day is it?) but here goes: BT Superfast Fibre, so up to 76mbps down/20mbps up. Just the work laptop, its built in webcam, Logitech wireless keyboard, MX Master mouse and (bought one week before the panic buying started), a 25" Dell Ultrasharp. All good so far. I'd like a better webcam (needs an Elgato Camlink - rarer than rocking horse **** - to use one of my proper cameras) and green screen (also rarer than rocking horse ****) and some lighting bearing in mind the office/bedroom window is behind me. In terms of communication, we do everything on Teams. Daily stand-ups are done via Teams video (though some just participate audio only - their choice). All hands meetings are done using corporate Zoom. Likewise, the Friday virtual pub lunch uses Zoom (though we're thinking of moving to Google Due to get around having to re-start after 40 minutes). VPN has been upgraded and improved, but we are definitely under attack. The super corporate control freak (and sadly very necessary) endpoint protection software, on the corporate Dell, occasionally goes mental!

It's working well for us. On a personal level, I'm happy work beyond 8PM tonight in order to enjoy more of the good weather forecasted for tomorrow. Professionally, I worry it's working too well. Someone, somewhere, must surely be looking at all that empty, expensive office space and thinking "Why?"

This. I've been looking at what a recovery looks like from a economic standpoint. I think we're going to see some very interesting, very different trends coming out of this (whenever that is).

Commercial real estate has completely crashed. But I'm not sure we've seen the bottom. Lots of companies are learning that they simply don't need the office space, and I think that hit to CRE will come later (i.e. when leases aren't renewed). It's one thing when tech companies start working from home, but now you have financial institutions publicly saying they'll be allowing that as well. Call centers are another thing I expect to see moved into people's houses. The tech exists to do that anywhere nowadays (ala B6)

I also think we're going to see a significant amount of people moving out of dense urban areas. Maybe not all at first, but the longer this goes on, the more pronounced it will be. Especially if a vaccine isn't fully effective (as some coronavirus experts are warning) and social distancing is around for years. This will affect not only housing, but business as well. This one will be interesting to watch. Do people move back to urban areas after some time? Who knows at this point.

I work for a software company that, through various acquisitions, has ended up with a parent company who's main business is contact centres. This is happening right now - thousands of people have been moved home, while the buildings themselves are being made as COVID-safe as possible for those who must be on site.

76 Mbps? How did they come up with that speed tier? Also, is broadband in the UK just generally slow? I live in the state that ranks 49th out of 50 for internet connectivity and the cheapest speed tier I can buy is 100 down and 10 up (but they over provision it so I actually get more like 117/17).

That's the fastest currently available on our street and is delivered over copper, to the house, under a scheme known as FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet). Virgin never installed cable TV/Fibre and BT is still some months away bringing fibre directly into people's homes here (FTTP - Fibre To The Premises - minimum speed for that offering is 150 down/50 up).

I'm not sure I'd describe fast enough stream 4k as slow though. That said, my 4g mobile sometimes exceeds 200mbps in a speed test.

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Originally Posted by HDQDD (Post 32387405)

Commercial real estate has completely crashed. But I'm not sure we've seen the bottom. Lots of companies are learning that they simply don't need the office space, and I think that hit to CRE will come later (i.e. when leases aren't renewed). It's one thing when tech companies start working from home, but now you have financial institutions publicly saying they'll be allowing that as well. Call centers are another thing I expect to see moved into people's houses. The tech exists to do that anywhere nowadays (ala B6)

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Agree with you... I oversee about 15 commercial leases for my company (arguably can be considered a financial institution), and we are nowhere near the bottom of the pricing cycle IMO. The two landlords I am working with right now on soon expiring leases have been excessively overconfident in negotiations up until the last 3 weeks, assuming that asking rates from the beginning of the year are still achievable. I have intentionally slowed played the two in progress deals, to allow the landlords to start losing confidence in their position. On the smaller space near PHL this foot dragging has proved effective, and on the other (which is 4,000 square feet in a the MIA adjacent Class "A" building) there has been no rent price movement but I did obtain a 40% jump in tenant improvement dollars versus what they offered 45 days ago. This Miami landlord though is one of the twenty largest insurance companies in the country and have a very healthy balance sheet.

The largest space my company occupies (NW Atlanta area), comes up early next summer and is 30,000 square feet in a Class "A" building. A year ago the 170,000 square foot building was 85% occupied, but my guess is now down to 50%. Working with our CEO and CFO, we are comfortable leasing no more than 15,000 square feet in the future. We previously used about 11,000 of the 30,000 square feet for a something similar to a BPO call center, but we’ve found that our current technology allows the call center space number to probably go down to 4,000 square feet. The work from home environment we mandated back on March 3 has had subjective benefits, staff morale being one. On a more objective basis customer service and client audits have reflected errors and caller complaints have not increased, plus nobody calls in sick. We expect to see further improvements in efficiency from our clerical work from home staff, once children go back to school.

Desktop hardware technology improvements, robust collaboration software, better staff training, high unemployment rates, and bandwidth improvements, make commercial office space a tenuous bet over the next few years. I feel for friends in the office space industry, but I am being paid to keeps costs down for my employer. If beating up landlords helps my (division of a Fortune 500) company meet financial goals, I’m all in.

I totally agree with you. I am fairly certain a post-COVID19 world will be very different even with an effective vaccine and anti-viral treatments. The last few months have shown that working from home is possible and in some ways even desirable. In densely packed cities, taking public transit or being crammed into offices can get people sick. I think people are going to be more of a germophobe going forward. We'll continue to innovate and come up with new ways to be productive while not get sick. My understanding is that the the reality for rural or secondary cities in the US may be different as their internet infrastructure traditionally lag behind the "first tier" cities.

I'm not certain that the internet connection quality in lower-level cities will matter but so much. Yes, better quality is better, but for many purposes, including mine, lower-quality connections will still allow me to get my work done over the course of a work day, albeit, at times, with frustratingly slow speeds, but adequate speeds the rest of the day. As long as workers are happy working at home despite the occasional hiccups in internet connections and employers are happy with the work produced, it almost doesn't matter where you are anymore. Our landlord put my employer on a five-year lease three years ago after moving us to another floor in our building and doing a major renovation, apparently out of the belief (valid at that time) that the local real estate market was on the upswing. I suspect that we will get a very favorable lease offer to maintain our current footprint when renewal rolls around although we may very well want to reduce the space we lease.

Fair enough, but people will still demand more consistency with speed. Who knows what other innovation will come if the internet infrastructure can support it? Let's aspire for the better rather than put up with something that's just adequate.

I'm on Virgin Media, and I'm on 350 down, 35 up. VM have 1G available in my area for an extra £10 a month, but I don't need it as yet.

Just curious if you know the BT pricing structure for the copper vs fiber since the copper internet is much more expensive in my neighborhood and is not offered to new customers. In the US AT&T charges more for their copper service than their fiber service. With our current promotion for AT&T fiber 1GB with no data cap, the price is $39.99 + tax ($1.32) + equipment (waived fro 12 months). When we switched to fiber almost 4 years ago, our internet cost dropped. One cable competitor is in the market that offers 200mbps down and 20mpbs up.

This is what I've heard from others. I really don't think CRE has any idea how bad their negotiating position is right now. ...And it's still deteriorating.



Well played. I have a friend who owns a bar and he's been having the same discussions. I told him hold out, because when customers start pulling the plug in masse, prices will plummet. Problem for him is that he's running out of money. So he may not be able to renew the lease anyway and that's another major problem looming for CRE.

Oh certainly, but even if those improvements don't occur, I think both employers and employees are seeing the benefits of remote working--benefits discussed for years but now more evident because of the experience under the current circumstances.

For the lowest speed pure fibre product, BT told me it will be installation cost only, so the ongoing monthly bill will remain the same. I expect gigabit level connections will cost quite a bit more. My current cost is a little opaque - certainly more than $39 for just the Internet and landline, but I also have a package of BT sports access and 4G mobile (i.e. the full so called quad pay). Could I get my internet cheaper? Absolutely! BT have form for taking their long term customers for a ride. I negotiated my overall bill down to less than £80 per month last year (and got them to double both the speed and limit on my 4G).

For comparison, we pay $69 for 100/10 from Spectrum (though $46 for the first 12 months). We could pay around $150 for 940/20 I think.

Spectrum's Gig service has 40mbps uploads, BTW, not 20. But yeah, US internet prices are more expensive than a lot of other places (though this is definitely region dependent).

Thanks. I was just curios. Our plan does not have a home phone line since our old number was moved to Google Voice. We have couple of cell phones using Hangouts over Wifi to receive the "home" number. Our internet is bundled with TV and cell service for an additional discounts and includes HBO.

It's obvious the private sector cannot address the internet divide in the US. It's falling behind compare to other developed economies. People in Singapore and Hong Kong would laugh at the speeds that the average US household gets from their ISP.

From what I can tell, it appears we've mostly given up on faster wireline internet and are pushing wireless internet (mainly via 5G) as the fix. I'm not sure it'll fix the availability problem but if 5G ends up fulfilling even some of its promises, it may give people at least one or two more viable competitors. Whether that'll materially affect pricing in practice is another question.

Honestly, I just want faster upload speeds. Even 100mbps would probably be enough for most people for quite a while.

You're right to a certain extent. Fiber deployment is expensive. Even Verizon scaled back it's deployment in NYC if I remember correctly. There is no easy answer for a country as big as the US. Rural areas will likely never see widespread fiber deployment for the foreseeable future.

5G won't be the answer either as it depends on the frequencies used. MM-wave 5G in theory delivers very high speed, but not likely to be used outside of densely populated areas like Manhattan, NY. It's also very expensive. The 5G network that will most likely to be built will use lower frequencies which means the signal will travel farther, but won't deliver fiber like speed.

I suspect satellite will play a bigger role in the 2020s.

I agree. Upload speed is very important.

Sure it can. It just chooses not to since it doesn't make money building out wireline infrastructure in sparsely populated areas. Verizon and Google have put their fiber to the premise plans (Fios and Google Fiber) on hold indefinitely once they realized how expensive it was. Ultimately, to really bridge the digital divide and make sure that anyone can get decent broadband, the only real answer will be massive government funding. This is also how they brought power to rural America in the 1920s-40s. New York State had one of the best programs, where the state allocated $500 million in competitive reverse auction funding to ISPs interested in building out their networks, with a preference for fiber and a minimum speed requirement in most areas of 100/100 Mbps. Exceedingly remote areas were allowed to get away with 25/3 (the FCC's current broadband definition).

Hong Kong is about 1,000 square miles in size. Singapore is 276. The US is 3.8 million.

Hong Kong and Singapore have almost 20,000 people per square mile. The US has less than 100.

It’s no surprise that for-profit telcos see much less ROI building out infrastructure over huge distances to reach sparsely populated areas.

Really? We have Fios and they still seem to be selling it although I don’t know in what areas.

Oh sure, they still sell it where they've built the fiber out but they aren't expanding the footprint beyond where it is.

I wasn’t aware of that. It makes sense, we are in an area where the cable company was also doing fiber so it was very competitive. We even upgraded to a gigabit connection which works really well.

It seems like it would have been relatively straightforward for Verizon to offer FiOS in a place like Manhattan where they already had tons of fiber running right into the buildings (and had for many years). I always wondered why they started in a place like Staten Island where the customer base is so much less dense and the service delivery seems more complicated (although negotiating with any NYC landlord or coop board is probably hell). Of course, this is also the company that bullied the PSC to grant state-wide franchises so it didn't have to negotiate with each municipality as is traditionally done for cable. They promised widespread availability, but largely haven't been delivered.

The story of cable operators and ISPs everywhere in places where there's no competition. They fight like hell to stifle competition (look at how vociferously they oppose municipally-led solutions, for example) and then do nothing to improve service while jacking up prices. I have Spectrum at home (the only option for >20Mbps in my area) and they charge me 3x what they charge in places with Fios or Google Fiber for the same speed. Because they can.

I agree that it seems like it should have been easy to offer Fios throughout Manhattan. I don't know why they don't. I think dealing with coop and condo boards is probably the reason, or at least a big part.

A former colleague told me that when he was at Verizon the VP in charge of Fios deployment knew it was going to be a money loser and canceled the buildout in Rhode Island just after they finished building the network past his house...

And I agree with you. There's just no way the digital divide can be solved without government subsidies. If Google can't make it work, I don't think anyone else can. So the government needs to continue to pony up. With each passing year, it's becoming quite apparent how important internet access is. If the federal government invest in internet infrastructure at the same scale as it does with the military, I'm fairly confident the problem will be solved pretty soon.

A decade ago, 100/100 was considered to be fast and acted like some sort of benchmark where we needed to be. Now, in my opinion, it has to be at least gigabit. I think we should strive to get as many households with a gigabit connection as soon as possible.

There's also pricing pressure and no one is going to invest in building a network unless there was a way to not only earn it back, but make a profit. The difficult part is pricing it in a way that will ensure they will make a profit, but not so prohibitively expensive that no one can afford it.

The current strategy isn't working. I don't think a municipally-led solution is the answer either. Look at Australia's attempt to build a national broadband network. There is massive cost overrun and unless I'm mistaken, it's still not finished. I think the solution here would be a massive private-public partnership. The truth is that there isn't a problem that the US can't solved. If we can put astronauts on the moon and build the world's most lethal and capable military, we can surely build the world's best internet infrastructure. Unfortunately, the hard truth is that it chose not to. This puts us in a long term economic disadvantage relative to our peers.

I am fortunate to have at least AT&T fiber and Spectrum as options for high speed connections. Spectrum is offering better pricing than the prices mentioned in this thread. Maybe it is because of the competition. When I signed up for for fiber a know it all in the office immediately replied it isn't true fiber because AT&T stopped adding fiber. Then I described the install with the fiber wall mount, he immediately responded you do...interesting.

Yeah, I'm still not sure I buy the "everyone needs gigabit" argument. I would ordinarily be first in line for the fastest speed available but 100/10 has proven to be just fine 98% of the time. If anything I would just rather have faster upload speeds. We actually get around 15Mbps up, and I'd like to see at least 50. Our download is perfectly fine for multiple 4K streams and whatever we're doing on the phone/tablet/computer.

The FCC's official definition of broadband is still 25/3 as far as I know, which is laughably not enough.

The thing with telecom infrastructure is that, mile for mile, it's one of the cheapest kinds of infrastructure. Roads are 15x more expensive per mile, for example. We just don't have the political will to do anything about it. Cable companies usually won't build out in areas with fewer than 20ish premises per mile. The only reason the phone company provides universal service is because they are required to.

About 20 years ago when I upgraded from dial-up to cable, it was a game changing experience for me. At the time, no one could have imagined the apps that would take advantage of the speed and bandwidth that's available today. Same thing with the transition from 2G to 4G LTE. Who knows what developers would come out with if everyone have access to a gigabit connection? Other advanced economies are moving forward so they're probably on to something.

Hence, my confusion over the choice of Staten Island vs. Manhattan. Perhaps the boards and landlords are a little too much to handle, or they were doing some extensive build-out work in NJ and included SI in that. My building has three providers (Spectrum/ex-TWC, RCN, and FiOS) with 3 different physical infrastructures. It took FiOS a long, long time to arrive, and the offers are not so compelling. Perhaps that will change, but I doubt it -- which is a similar story as other places.

I was the same, I was always pushing the limits and couldn't wait to get faster speeds. Nowadays, I barely use 20% of my bandwidth (350Mps). Nothing has changed for me for about 5 years, and I can't see much more happening in the near to medium future that would require me to upgrade. Then again, I don't have kids or play games :)

I think the focus will be on wireless for the foreseeable future. Elon Musk is betting big on satellites. It could be a potential gamechanger if the pricing is right and latency is low. It won't rival fiber, but I suspect people will sign up if those two criteria are met.

This is like the chicken and the egg type of situation right? I'm pretty sure none of us would want to go back to the cable speeds of the early 2000s. It would be too slow for the apps that we're using now. I suspect that as soon as the use case is developed, people will demand more speed.