You know what I love about remote work? The fact that you can wake up at 8:59 am and be at work by 9:00 am. You literally just have to get up from bed and walk over to your desk. In fact, you don’t even technically have to get up if you decide to work in bed. That’s the beauty of remote work.
My first taste of remote work was in March 2020, when Nigeria got it’s first taste of COVID-19. Our boss just showed up one morning and said that that was the last time we’d see each other in person for a while. Like everyone else, I pretended to be sad about it, but I was lowkey excited. I live in Lagos, and commuting in this state, regardless of the distance, is an experience that should be reserved as punishment for the most evil souls in hell. I spent the next few days making sure I had all the things I needed to work from home smoothly.
- A laptop (provided by work)
- A steady power source (generator)
- Highspeed internet (using my phone as a modem and powered by MTN)
On our first day of remote work, I sat at my desk ready to slay the day from the comfort of my home. At 9 am, I logged into Zoom for the weekly Monday morning meeting and started giving a presentation about what my team was up to the previous week when my internet connection vanished and I got disconnected from the call. I freaked out and turned to my phone to see what had happened and noticed I had an incoming call from my mum. While frantically trying to rejoin the Zoom meeting, I picked the call and found out that my mum was just calling to make sure I was doing ok in during quarantine.
I assured her I was — even though I sounded like a crazy person because I couldn’t rejoin the Zoom meeting for some reason. I was able to rejoin when the call ended. I apologised to everyone present and continued the presentation. It would take three more incidences (during another Monday meeting, an online meeting with a an important client, and my online appraisal) for me to realise that a call coming in on a phone being used as a modem disrupts the internet connection.
It made sense that I’d never noticed this before (I always worked from the office) but I now had to figure out how to stop this from happening at important times. I wasn’t able to do that so I just managed it until 2022, hoping for the best. That didn’t work either so I finally started reaching out to my colleagues to ask for advice on what I could do to avoid this embarrassment. After a slew of “I don’t know, man,” one of them replied me with something she insisted would be a solution.
VoLTE from MTN.
She said she also heard about it from a friend and volunteered to be in the test group. She described it a new service that enables people to make clearer calls with the added advantage of allowing internet usage whilst making a call! I dashed to the nearest MTN office to find out all I could about it and was informed I already had all I needed.
- A 4G SIM and a 4G smartphone.
- A VoLTE eleigible phone (not all phones can do it)
- Be in an area where 4G Network is available.
After fixing the settings on my phone, I was asked to restart my phone for the process to be complete. To avoid stories that touch, I tried it right there. I made a phone call while scrolling on Intstagram and the internet wasn’t disrupted. The next time a call came in during an online work meeting, it didn’t disrupt my flow. I was finally free!
Don’t dull. Click here to find out how you can get in on the VoLTE action.
