Posted: 08th Oct, 2010 By: MarkJ

Business ISP
Star UK, a provider of on-demand computing and communication services to businesses, has estimated that UK firms (SME) are funding their employees'
lunchtime broadband surfing habits to the tune of
over £23 million per year.
The figures, which are based on actual usage monitored from Star's data centres (serves over
3,000 UK businesses), highlight that lunchtime is consistently the peak period for bandwidth usage. On average this lunchtime peak is 18% higher than any other time of the working day.

John Adey, Star's Chief Operating Officer, said:
"As ISPs are increasingly moving towards capping bandwidth utilisation for high volume users and offering different levels of service at different rates, companies will be forced to take a closer look at how their bandwidth is being used in order to ensure that they are not sizing their bandwidth capacity around non business usage.
In a society where, as consumers we have embraced a viewpoint that anything Internet-oriented should be free, it will be hard to accept higher pricing for internet access. Yet the fact remains that the cost of providing next generation services requires investment to provide the infrastructure and tools to deliver them efficiently, and someone has to foot the bill.
As we see an increasing trend of SMEs in the UK moving to cloud based services, the need to manage the use of internet access will become ever more pressing. We believe that allowing employees the freedom to use the web is vital to a well motivated and productive workforce but not at any cost. Like any other resource, there will be an increasing need for businesses to control and manage bandwidth or risk jeopardising the undoubted benefits that services delivered from the internet using ‘cloud’ technology can deliver."
There is of course nothing unusual about employees using office internet connectivity to go online during breaks. However the increased usage of high bandwidth applications like Internet TV, video conferencing and VoIP can cause problems, especially during major sporting events.