The Covid-19 global pandemic has accelerated digitalisation for both consumers and businesses, as a digital lifestyle starts to integrate into everyday lives.

The global pandemic has driven everyone indoors and shuttered many businesses amid national lockdowns worldwide, forcing the adoption of online services.

Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies implemented work-from-home initiatives and sought out alternatives for face-to-face engagements.

Schools and universities temporarily closed their brick-and-mortar facilities, moving classes online and shifting to remote learning approaches, while all public and sporting events were cancelled.

“Online services, including online shopping, e-banking, remote education, remote healthcare, mobile entertainment and video- based social networking, will proliferate at an unprecedented rate and will no longer be limited to a particular demographic, geography or social class,” a new White Paper by global technology market advisory firm ABI Research notes.

The firm says that even the most sceptical consumer or business is preparing to integrate a digital lifestyle in their everyday lives.

The situation has led consumers to migrate their social activities to online platforms and increase their Internet consumption to access information and use digital services, while enterprises rely more on video conferencing, online marketing techniques and online training, embracing new digital tools with the potential to save both time and money in supporting their operations.

In the longer term, the current necessities could lead to an increased desire and testbed for flexible and remote working and learning in the future, while companies may shift marketing and business resources away from conference-centric approaches toward new online and virtual marketing tools.

“It could lead to a reassessment of how many modern workplaces and working relationships are structured, reducing the impact of long commutes and travel and enabling more flexible working and remote collaboration, leading to improved employee satisfaction and an improved work-life balance,” the report indicates.

According to ABI Research, while mobile data traffic is surging significantly, the current telecommunications networks are unlikely to be challenged by the situation, except in a few areas that are poorly serviced by these networks.

Current mobile and fixed networks have shown a “very strong resilience” to the crisis, even in countries like Italy, China and Korea, where extreme contingency measures have been taken.

“Indeed, we have not heard of a single network blackout or outage since the start of the crisis. This is largely because these networks are largely over- provisioned to cope with emergencies of this calibre,” the company notes.