UK Businesses Failing To Provide Proper Office Wi-Fi

Mike Moore,

Majority of UK offices lack effective Wi-Fi connectivity, ZyXEL survey finds

UK businesses are lagging severely behind their European counterparts in terms of adequate connectivity in the workplace, research has found.

A study from ZyXEL has revealed that 78 percent of British workers experience connection problems in the office, significantly higher than many other countries.

Two thirds of office workers in the UK (65 percent) also say they have no wireless internet at work, in comparison to employees in the Netherlands where only a third have to work without Wi-Fi.

office worker_computerDisconnected

This lack of connectivity is also having a severe effect on productivity, the survey found, as 56 percent of UK workers saying that they become frustrated and find it hard to get any work done when they can’t connect.

With almost a quarter of these UK office workers (24 percent) missing deadlines because of bad connectivity, some British workers have blamed the Government, claiming it does not invest adequately in infrastructure and their company suffers as a result.

ZyXEL’s research found that poor connectivity in the workplace has caused over a third of British office employees to feel less productive.

“As we approach 2015 it’s astounding that so many office workers are without Wi-Fi in their office,” said Lee Marsden, EU President, ZyXEL.

“With no proper solutions, workers are bearing the brunt of such poor connectivity by failing to meet deadlines and missing targets. The growth in high-speed connectivity across Europe, increasing adoption of cloud services and the shift towards mobile working, is highlighting a very clear opportunity for business to sit up and realise how they can both increase productivity and improve customer service.”

The UK’s broadband was actually hailed as “the best in Europe” by Culture Secretary Sajid Javid back in October. Britain now has the most extensive superfast networks of any major European nation; Javid said, thanks in part to having doubled its fibre coverage over the last four years, alongside a superfast broadband network which he said is “reaching every corner of our country” and is set to reach 95 percent of the population by 2017.

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