Discussion on:

Bring your own Internet is the next trend to vex IT pros

What's your organization's available bandwidth per employee? Are you concerned about bring your own internet? How will you manage the trend?

why dont we just cut out the middle man, if BYOD and BYOI are the next big things, why not BYOE ( bring your own employee ) i mean if im gonna pay for my own phone/computer/internet why dont i just pay someone to come in and do my work for me. ill take a cut and just have to sit on my butt and eat cheetos.

... and wonders if he is perhaps in the (very small?) minority who see gloom and pain while the "BYOx" (Bring Your Own whatever) thingie gathers momentum. Who, precisely, do employees work for? Last time I checked, for employERs. Having been both in the past (employee and employer), I am forced to ask whether or not the "me me me" culture is not perhaps getting a bit out of hand. The employee bears almost zero responsibility or cost (essential, not elective!) for the consequences of BYOx. There are usually very good reasons (security, cost, consistency and more) for NOT allowing a BYOx free-for-all. In any event, aside from a little "reasonable personal activity" (which includes making a doctor's appointment, sorting out young Tim's school bag issue, and maybe even a quick call to partner to say something sweet and loving), what the heck "personal" stuff is SO engaging that one simply must BYOx and hang the employER's interest in running an actual business? I recognize the need for compromise, but this is beginning to be a bit much ... hell, I even have employees (yeah, I am an employer for now) who look shocked, wounded and open-mouthed when I break it to them that BYOE (Bring Your Own Email) for company mails is just NOT acceptable. My formerly full head of hair is less so now ... they just don't get it that confidential company information is ONLY to travel via company email. This is only one tiny, tiny example. There are more. Watch ... BYOx is not going to end all that happily.

I shall now return to Ludd Manor, and my happy little coterie of Luddites!

The fresh starters we get - geneneration FB - seem to have given up on the concepts of privacy and security completely and are fine with sacrificing (my companies) security to make things easy or "fun" for them.

Costs for Internet continue to get cheap and cheaper, so IT departments can work with HR to implement broad Telework Programs to improve employee morale, reduce office costs for cube space and utilities by establishing Hotel cubes, virtualizing the environment so access to critical systems and services are available at home or work.

The cost off sets add up to quite a bit.

How many employees are currently on their phones or personal tablets surfing Facebook, Pintarest, StumbleUpon, Twitter or hundreds of other productivity-sapping sites daily? They've already brought their own Internet to the office.

Here's something not many will talk about: Work-from-home can be viewed as discriminatory.

In order to work well, one must have a room (preferably with a door) to use as an office. That implies a certain socio-economic strata; one that can afford an extra bedroom in the home and broadband internet access (it's been about 10 years since I've had an employer offer to reimburse me for internet access). It is preferential to suburbanites (who are more likely to have a multi-bedroom dwelling that urban-dwellers) and those higher on the corporate food chain (can a janitor really work from home?)

Given my complete lack of faith in humanity and my strong disgust with the US legal system, I predict we're less than 10 years away from work-from-home discrimination lawsuits.

It is often faster at home but for how long?

My sister works from home and had to go for a Business ADSL line with no contention.
Home ADSL usually has a contention rate of 50:1.

So 5.8Mbps / upto 50 people. In posher areas it is already getting slow where every household has Internet.

To work from home and connect to a VPN you often need the best perfomance and a low contention rate.
Also if you read HOME ASDL contracts its for private home use only. If you want to be legal you do have to buy a business ADSL to work F/t from home.

This is Nostodamus-esque soothsaying tripe.
Do these people have nothing better to do than write predictions of how things may be.
The only thing Vex-ing us is you with your childish, blinkered approach to the thought that employees have to be driving employers.
Damn, i wish i could fire these BYOx ers...
Try BYOW = Bang Your On Welfare
Twitter that on Twatter while we move forward with whats best for the business, the employees and long term profits.

this ain't gonna happen. Where I work the volume of attachments alone would slam your usage cap within a few days. We would have to take out a 2nd mortgage to pay our cell bills by the end of the month.

Cellular companies are going to kill mobile computing with their caps and prices (in the U.S. anyway). People can't afford to go much beyond the typical smartphone usage, which is really just trivial use for the most part. It's certainly not priced for someone who needs to work in the cloud.

I get to manage a relatively small business with not much stress on security or speed. So for about 50 users, my business Internet (for which we pay only $150/month) is ~10Mbits/3Mbits. Even during lunchtimes, when personal use is at it's peak, webpages and downloads happen reasonably quickly (for me, but I'm patient) at an average of ~185 to ~400Kbs (according to a typical browser download). When I'm here after hours, that number hits ~800 to ~900. My 'new' home Internet is Fiber, with a supposed speed of 15Mbits/15Mbits. I don't really see much of an improvement. Heck, back in the old days I used to liken a business T1 to a Diesel truck. Even when they had 'faster' connections at home, the T1 would be faster, even with a ton of people using it at once.

So when people whine about our Internet speed, I just say, "So?" and ask them if they'd like to pay the difference for a faster connection. I love the author's reasoning of paying 'X per MBit/s'. By that reasoning, I should have bought a Ferrari! 'x per MPH' makes it a STEAL of a deal! Oh, wait... I won't be able to USE all of that speed most of the time, so it's a wasted expense...

I continually use my own cell connection at work for things like external testing as if I was a user. Also listening to music and to check external emails. Also use the same device for testing software we make internally and externally.
I have had unlimited cell data for years and used it at work ever since.

The article states "...for around $50 per month the employee can use up to 5Mb of broadband wireless data.". I suspect you are trying to state "5GB" of data, a typical threshold for limiting or throttling data usage.

You are correct. Should read 5 Gb, not 5 Mb. Thanks for catching that.

My apologies for the error!

-- Andy