Those reliant on their home broadband may be troubled by the imminent flu season, as the UK network struggles to keep up with bandwidth demand.

40 percent of the workforce would not be able to reach their place work for an extended period of time, as claimed by the analysts in Gartner and the Centre for Disease Control.

It means that the local networks would not be able to cope up with the sudden surge in broadband demand, as workers will be working from home.

As of now, when consumer traffic is at its lowest, work-at-home internet usage for commercial purposes is accounted for in the daytime. However, during a pandemic, as per estimates, consumer internet usage is believed to happen at the same time as work-from-home usage as many children will be home from school.

In order to address bandwidth and latency issues, the employers have distributed special software. However, Gartner believes that the usage of 3G, WiMAX or satellite connections will help in curbing broadband speed problems caused by a pandemic (click for pay as you go dongle information).

Roberta Witty, research vice president at Gartner, explained that remedial strategies for WAH, including pandemic and WAH impact planning in coordination with network service providers, need to be adopted by different companies. Decision should be taken in advance as to which business operation needs the increased bandwidth as per its heavy internet usage and possibly staggering hours of operations.

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