workers and students. Tuesday mornings
used to be the peak time for video conference
platform Zoom, but now there’s an ongoing
demand for that amount of data, said Kelly
Steckelberg, chief financial officer of the San
Jose, California-based company.
Steckelberg said the company has accelerated
the opening of two new U.S. data centers to
meet the demand and is adding servers to its
existing 17 data centers around the world. Cisco,
which runs the Webex video conference service,
said it has prepared itself for “sustained peaks”
in the U.S. after already handling a doubling of
usage in Asian countries including China, Japan
and South Korea.
Microsoft, which asked 50,000 of its own
employees to work from home in the Seattle
region before Washington State sent all
“nonessential” workers home, has seen
dramatic demand spikes for its workplace
communications service known as Teams. Rival
workplace communications platform Slack
has experienced “just a massive outpouring
of interest,” CEO Daniel Butterfield said on an
earnings call earlier this month.
Major phone and cable companies have agreed
to open up their wireless hot spots for public
use, and said they are also waiving data caps and
won’t cut homes or business’ internet off because
of an inability to pay. Experts have said the core of
the U.S. network is more than capable of handling
the virus-related surge in demand because it
has evolved to easily handle bandwidth-greedy
Netflix, YouTube and other streaming services.
But people confined to their homes
have still found it a struggle to maintain
human connections.