Fiberside Chat by 3-GIS: What Will the Telecommunications Industry Look Like Post-Pandemic?

3-GIS had a pandemic policy ready, but it did not expect to have to use it.

After the SARS-CoV-1 coronavirus crisis in the early 2000s, 3-GIS CEO Tom Counts thought it was important to draw up some regulations.

Even as prepared as 3-GIS was, however, there still were plenty of things they had to adapt to on the fly.

“The pandemic policy did lay out some of those communication guidelines, but it was one of those things that, as you’re going through your policy manual, you kind of skip that page. You think, ‘That was needed for the Spanish flu days, not 2020,’” said Dustin Sutton, 3-GIS’ President. “So, we did have to dust that off and really dig into, ‘How are we going to communicate?’”

Being a tech-first company, there already were measures in place and a high level of familiarity with tools like Zoom, which Sutton pointed out has entered the vernacular as a verb these days with children “Zooming” their friends after their online school.

While everyone has made modifications in both their personal and professional lives, the telecommunications industry has been slow to implement tweaks because of COVID-19 and, more or less, things are continuing as they were at the end of 2019.

“I haven’t seen any fundamental change, really, in the way networks are being designed, built or architected today. There’s a lot of concern. You always hear the phrase ‘new normal.’ I don’t think we know what that is yet,” Counts said. “I think normal is yet to be determined. I think we’re on a journey to a normal, and I really hope to God we get back to old normal.”

Even if we have to adjust to a different world around us, Counts and 3-GIS will be ready to adapt quickly – especially after seeing his team adapt to the current pandemic.

“A beautiful benefit to us that we didn’t expect was increased productivity,” he said. “I would’ve been so happy if we could’ve had the same productivity, but it’s actually up.”

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