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Apero

CMS Digitalbytes

21 April 2020

It's Day 29 in the Big Brother House and the housemates have settled into some sort of lock down routine, much of which is punctuated by staying in touch with the World via viedo link. While the children's routine involves aciduously jumping around for half an hour with Joe Wicks, online tutoring and music play along with their music groups on various platforms, the parents' routine revolves around work video conferencing and, essential to survival, friends' and family aperos.

The apero (or aperitif) is a much loved tradition of pre-dinner drinks, usually accompanied with nibbles, preferably of the not so healthy variety.  It sets the scene for the hours to come and starts the conversation juice going. Thanks to video apps, this pleasant social time has now evolved into a new tradition - the video apero.

The truth is that what confinement has revealed is that we are not so much social distancing as physically distancing; and video has enabled to stay socially close in much needed times. It has been crucial to working, to teaching and, of course, to socialising.

So unsurprisingly, apps and platforms offering video conferencing services are booming. Zoom has made headlines recently with ups and downs, but the general direction of travel is probably not going to be materially changed in the end.

This reinforces the case for fibre and 5G technology and deployment with increased, faster and more reliable dataflow, while at the same the technology and deployment are in fact enablers of our crave for more data use. In the same way that connection interruptions during a video apero lead to huffing and puffing, had it not been for the technology we would not have done used video for apero in the first place.

So, yes, the direction of travel for video conferencing service providers is going to continue on the up. And, in fact the newly reported deal of the acquisition by Verizon of Blue Jeans is probably the aperitif of deals to come.

Verizon has acquired video conferencing company BlueJeans Network as it taps into booming demand for online meeting tools being used by millions more people as they work from home.

The content above was originally posted on CMS Digitalbytes - CMS lawyers sharing comment and commentary on all things tech.

Authors

Portrait ofAnne Chitan
Anne Chitan
Partner
London