41% of employees mull internet upgrade in next 12 months

Teleworkers said they need more than a basic level of connectivity.

About 41% of employers in Hong Kong are mulling to upgrade their internet service in the next 12 months to support their hybrid work setup, a survey by Cisco has found.

Based on a Cisco survey, there are more workers in Hong Kong (48%) who rely on their home internet to work or run their business compared to countries like Taiwan (34%) and South Korea (34%).

On average, the majority (88%) of workers in Hong Kong use their broadband at home for four hours or more, and in the year ahead more than half of them (60%) expect their usage to increase or stay the same.

To support this increase, 72% of employers also want the government to accelerate plans to ensure high-speed and reliable internet is available to everyone such as establishing broadband policies and programs “that encourage competition, drive internet investments, and expand its reach.”

Service providers, for their part, can partner with the government to develop programs that address the needs of the unserved or underserved and adopt new ways of networking to power the ‘Internet for the Future’ that will meet demand,” Cisco said.

The need to “dramatically” improve the broadband services to support the new way of working has been underscored by the majority (72%) of those surveyed by Cisco, with 78% of them also saying having reliable and a quality broadband connection is important to them.