The State of Streamergency Today: Need for Better Internet

In March of 2020, the world woke up to the grim reality of COVID-19. The pandemic forced everyone to spend the majority of their time at home, and the internet was put to the ultimate stress test.

All of a sudden, millions of people simultaneously needed high-quality, uninterrupted internet. While internet service providers did keep almost everyone mostly online throughout the pandemic, service left a lot to be desired. Every challenge was exacerbated by the importance of staying online.

And over the past year, we’ve heard from so many of you who have been impacted by issues with your internet - streamergencies, or streaming emergencies, that have left you struggling to stay productive. Our team has experienced many of the same challenges.

Two-thirds of Americans feel their productivity has been impacted to some degree by internet speed or stability issues.

We had enough with bad internet and decided to do something about it. First by quickly making upgrades to Speedify and unlocking features that make it ideal for video conferencing, gaming, live streaming and everything else that helps us interact virtually.

And now by getting to the roots of the issue, to figure out the impact of streamergencies. Everyone isn’t imagining the problems they’re facing. While a lot of people haven’t had internet issues, millions of people continually have them.

Today, we announced our latest research report, called "State of Streamergency", which looked at the imperfect internet we all face, the most important online activities for consumers, and remote workers’ productivity challenges.

We asked more than 500 consumers in the US for their opinions on how the internet has performed during the pandemic and the streamergencies that have increasingly disrupted online activities.

What we found is that although most people are generally satisfied with their home internet connections, the majority are either only somewhat satisfied or have some degree of frustration with it. If we extrapolate our results to the US population, more than 36 million people in the country are likely to be dissatisfied with their home internet.

As we all rely on it for work and other activities, the importance of having a reliable internet connection only continues to grow. If a streamergency hits at exactly the wrong moment, frustration ratchets up.

• Our study found that 94% of the more than 500 consumers surveyed feel it is very important to have a reliable internet connection. 
• Remote workers are even more likely than the average respondent to feel it’s important, with 100% stating that.
• Yet 88% of consumers experience some degree of nervousness or frustration about their internet connection’s stability, indicating that reliability isn’t quite where it needs to be.

As the internet has taken on a more central role in everything we do, people care most about activities that connect them to other people. They feel very frustrated when a streamergency happens during those key activities.

• The top three activities respondents most frequently cited that they use their home internet for are: streaming videos, joining video conferences and work.
• The three situations respondents identified as being the most frustrating for the internet to fail: video conferencing, hosting a virtual event and talking to friends and family.

Video is at the center of our lives now, from streaming videos online to video conferences and video chats with loved ones.

Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex and other video conferencing providers took the world by storm in 2020 as we migrated to virtual interactions due to the pandemic. But video conferencing has also introduced new challenges and frustrations.

• Zoom is the video conferencing provider people are most likely to use, with 72% using the service, followed by Webex, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet.
• Remote workers are even more likely to use Zoom than the average person, with 88% using it.
• The internet has failed or performed poorly for nearly one in three video conferencing users.
• Rural users are disproportionately affected, as they are 66% more likely to believe video conferencing has performed poorly compared to urban dwellers.

Almost half (48%) of employed respondents are currently working from home. Remote workers have stayed as productive as possible during the pandemic, but significant numbers have lost productivity due to unreliable internet. In fact, 68% of respondents believe their productivity has been impacted to some degree due to internet speed or stability issues.

• Generally, workers appreciate their work from home arrangements, with 77% of remote workers feeling satisfied with it
• However, more than one in ten employees feel they have been impacted to a great extent by internet speed and stability issues.
• Remote workers are feeling the pain even more than average, as 77% have been impacted to some degree by those issues compared to the average worker.
• Over half of workers believe their organizations aren’t doing enough to ensure they have fast or stable internet.

Streamergencies are a fact of life now, but they don’t have to be.

There are several steps people can take to reduce the impact of streamergencies. The first is to upgrade your equipment, such as using routers with the latest standards and adding range extenders or repeaters in larger spaces.

Next, shop around providers to see if one offers better connectivity in your area. Explore the tiers of their offerings and find one that has enough speed to meet your needs.

Lastly, software. We all typically have access to more than one internet connection but can only use one at a time. Speedify is designed to stop streamergencies. It’s the only tool that combines all of your internet connections at once, to take advantage of their combined speed and reliability. 

We will continue to interact with people and work online. By following those steps, streamergencies can eventually become a relic of the pandemic.