Amid a terrible and tragic pandemic, we have to look for good news anywhere we can get it as that’s a sign that we will return to normal and learn how to do things more wisely from this experience.
One of those signs? There’s strong evidence that certain companies are replacing how business was done before on the technology front, starting by expanding bandwidth as it pertains to volume, efficiency and value.
The fact is, operating at 20, 30, even 50 megabits per second was never going to be good enough to meet the demands of this new era where it felt like everybody with a pulse was videoconferencing, not just those of us in business. Fortunately for us, utilizing a massive jump in bandwidth, Zoom was one of the first companies at the beginning of the pandemic to jump into a bandwidth upgrade very aggressively. As a result, they understood how to keep us better connected for all circumstances while using the Internet for videoconferencing.
Now, we all know it wasn’t always ideal using Zoom in the past. A person’s voice and mouth on video didn’t match perfectly, for instance. It also was tough to understand people at times. Today, much of that frustration with the technology has mostly subsided.
Who Else Is Benefitting From Expanded Bandwidth?
- Applications rooted in providing remote learning
- Virtual meeting places
- Virtual reality / augmented reality systems
- 4K television
- 5G phone networks
Let’s explore these developments a little deeper.
As bandwidth availability moves beyond megabits to gigabits, we should see the next great leap and areas, such as the ones above, could well benefit. Here’s what we mean: Currently, if you’re in a Zoom meeting, it’s challenging to talk to more than one person, right? Zoom, in its current state, can’t handle audio with more than one person speaking. If three or four people were to get in a heated discussion, hearing each other would be no small challenge.
Yet, what if you enter a virtual room where you can talk to another person even without needing to whisper like in a regular room? The way these emerging and evolving systems are designed is that if one person starts talking, the system essentially decides who everybody will be listening to, as opposed to trying to merge all the sounds in a way that you’d hear multiple people talking at the same time.
Let’s face it: Up to this point, a variety of communication tools haven’t been the greatest for more than two people at any given time. But today, we can accommodate 100 people in the same room or 50 people on one screen. The infrastructure is there to utilize increased system bandwidth effectively. I’m supremely confident that companies that bet on an ever-expanding communication capacity at the same price, if not lower, are going to be winners compared to others who maintain the status quo and see no point in doing anything else to upgrade capacity.
There may not be a plethora of 4K movies yet and the cable systems are not sending us many of their channels in 4K, but make no mistake: 4K movies and television will be mainstream soon enough.
With so many people working from home, there’s going to be a tremendous push to deliver systems that make it simple for 10-15 people to meet in a virtual meeting room and interact with each other. That will have a more significant impact than having the default of a speaker. For now, Zoom has only one “Speaker View,” – but having multiple speakers might be right around the corner.
Another example of a company benefitting from increased bandwidth is Apple, which has announced that its newest phone will be 5G and promising better synchronization.
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Talman Advantage #7: We Already Know Many People At The Top
The built-in advantage of being a more specialized recruiter for over three decades is that Roy Talman & Associates established many strong relationships with senior leaders in the C-suite and Director level. How do we truly leverage that? Prior to your interview, we can provide you terrific insight on the person’s background, the questions they’re likely to ask you and even a few clues into why prior candidates were likely rejected.
A recruiter that equips you with more information in advance of the interview? That just might make all the difference – if you talk to Talman first.
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What is the Challenge?
The challenge before us now that a new era of technological prowess is about to arrive: We have the speed of communication, stability of communication and latency of communication progressing leaps and bound. That means industries and businesses will be recognizing they can do things that they couldn’t do before. It’s not hard to envision telemedicine and remote surgery applications that can depend on much higher resolution images. We are already reading about machine learning-assisted colonoscopy procedures that detect polyps only a millimeter or two in size.
With higher performance comes higher expectations. And that includes what we can expect from here in terms of how we work together.
…And What is to Come?
In the future, it’s safe to assume that a lot of companies will want to invest in people who will be working from home. Let’s say yours is one of them. You have a team of 12 people who need to be continuously communicating with one another – and simultaneously speaking without interfering with each other. They should have large screens for this communication and enough bandwidth in their technology to produce high-quality images. Therefore, instead of having one camera, it may require each team member to have two or three cameras so that the image isn’t disappearing as it is sometimes prone to do on Zoom (especially with those virtual backgrounds!). So if someone likes to walk and talk, they can do so without sacrificing any details on image quality or voice communication.
It’s not that all of your team members need to be working from home five days a week. Still, even if some are working from home two or three days a week, they will require technologies to make the experience more productive through more robust bandwidth, larger screens and better software to make for a smooth, seamless interaction with co-workers.
As companies will be offering more and more of these functionalities very quickly, think about how this might impact your communication internally and externally. Is your HR department technologically equipped for coordinating and planning without missing a beat? If you have to conduct interviews with candidates and provide them with a set of problems to solve as part of the interviewing process, can you do so with ease?