Who pays your broadband bill?

As more people work from home, more employers are paying for home broadband service. But, asks Quocirca's Rob Bamforth, how wise is this?

At one time computers and networks were found only in certain workplaces, were often selected and managed by specialists - the high priests of IT - and were certainly far in advance of anything even geeky hobbyists would have experienced at home.

Now not only have computers evolved from techie gear into mainstream affordable consumer electronics, domestic communications networks have changed as predicted in the 1990s from plain old telephone systems (Pots) to pretty awesome new stuff (Pans).

For consumers, Pans means mobile connectivity wherever they go and high speed broadband - all at a relatively affordable price. I say relatively because the typical home with two mobile phones, broadband and a fixed phone calling plan could easily be spending £100 per month on connectivity.

So is there a problem with individuals spending their own money on communications needs for work too?

Depending on their job role, many employees will find their employer provides them with some form of mobile device - phone and/or laptop - and some connectivity plan.

The once-simple proposition of providing a mobile phone on a corporate tariff is now more complex as individuals have their own preferences, styles and usage requirements. The business-supplied mobile phone has also at times necessitated a more intricate sharing of beans counted between employee, employer and taxman as the line between personal and work use blurs.

Remote access to IT increases this complexity. While remote working once might have involved a hotel network connection for a road warrior's laptop, it is now far more likely to encompass other locations, in particular the home.

This further blurs the divide between personal and business use, especially if an employee is regularly expected to work in these locations, while still remaining in a technical environment controlled and secured by the IT department. The remote employee might be using other business critical applications in addition to email, or they may be using IP telephony bridged into the corporate PBX to appear like any other extension even when working from home.

This begs the question - who then pays for the home broadband and who is responsible for ensuring it meets the company's needs?

According to recent Quocirca research, the answers are by no means clear.

More than a third of medium to large enterprises across Europe already have employees using broadband to work from home, with another third starting to become active in this area. Around a quarter of companies are providing and paying for their employees' connections and of the rest, 17 per cent have employees claiming back all or some of the costs.

Home broadband is rarely going to be used solely for business purposes, so the employees are bound to be getting some benefit by being able to bank, shop, download content etc over that connection. This means the connection might be heavily used and by some less than friendly or even unsafe applications.

Are these appropriate network conditions for those employees working from home who have to conduct confidential business or who use mission-critical processes? Probably not but then can an employer really take full control of the broadband connection, compelling the employee to get another for personal use? And what happens when two members of the household work from home with different employers?

Ultimately it's unlikely employers will be able to dictate the network equipment used at home, such as a secure router at the entry point to the employee's household network. So how then do they retain at least some control, to ensure that corporate security and protection needs are met and that services used by the employee at home meet suitable service criteria?

The first step is to realise that once IT access is granted from outside the physical corporate perimeter, the infrastructure is outside of the business' control and the focus must be turned to the endpoints - the PCs, laptops and mobile devices.

If this hardware is provided and controlled by the business, it can usually be configured to meet security and connectivity needs. If not, then the endpoint has to be treated as untrusted and corporate services have to be delivered through virtually private managed network connections.

Some of the risks can be reduced if businesses take an active interest in the specification, cost and availability of domestic broadband services on offer to their employees. It might be possible to work in partnership with carrier suppliers to ensure more commonality across employees' network access.

However, the caveat as always is the uncertainty of 'events' as employees move on, and all too often carrier partners become yesterday's suppliers when a cheaper deal comes along. Perhaps the virtual extension of the corporate network into employees' homes offers an incentive and opportunity to take a slightly longer term view - especially if the carrier can take on some of the complexity of dealing with the network load-balancing of work and life.

For a more detailed look at the issues surrounding corporate telecoms, including employees working from home over broadband, download the "Convergence or confusion" report for free from the Quocirca website.