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In the U.S. we are seeing more employees bring their own devices (BYOD) to work. We have also seen that while there is still a lot of frustration more and more corporations are adopting policies that allow these devices to be integrated into their corporate ecosystem.

Earlier this year, in July, a research study conducted by the Ponemon Institute (News - Alert) found that about 60 percent of U.K. businesses have no personal device policy in place when it comes to BYOD. A new, report called the Network Benchmark Report, shows that things are a little different in the U.K than they are in the U.S.

This current report, which was conducted by TalkTalk Business, shows that a majority of U.K. organizations do not have networks that are capable of dealing with BYOD. This survey questioned 250 IT managers across the U.K. The goal was to scrutinize their attitudes concerning their corporate networks. What are the main priorities that these managers focus on?

Of the group that was surveyed, a little more than a third of the respondents, 36 percent said that they had enough bandwidth to cover current as well as future need. Unfortunately, the majority answer was that their networks are not BYOD-ready. Only 52 percent of the IT managers denoted that their data centers are as resilient as they should be.

Just shy of three quarters, 70 percent of the IT managers responded that they have the tools to view real-time network statistics and the capability to use them often. The numbers do show that more than not, the people who were surveyed feel confident.

The numbers show that 64 percent said that they could easily make changes to their network as needed, while 77 percent had confidence in the fact that the proper firewalls have been set up to prevent threats from the public Internet.

In many respects, people are the same all over the world. If you give them enough bandwidth to do what they want, then they will want to do more and therefore need more bandwidth. The TalkTalk Business report shows that 64 percent said that they experience some form of business disruption due to bandwidth restrictions.

In fact, 34 percent of the respondents did not have confidence that their current network was suitable for their voice traffic needs. There is still a need to build up their capabilities so they can fully exploit the potential of being able to deal with mobility and BYOD.

72 percent said that they receive complaints about poor application performance or VoIP quality. There are a couple of reasons why a number of businesses are turning to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and perhaps what can alleviate some of the problems is turning to mobile VoIP options.

It offers a streamlined approach to communications and if the system is managed offsite by a proven vendor, the stress associated with maintaining the system goes away. If the system doesn’t support mobile VoIP, however, the full intended benefits may be out of reach.

This may be the direction that IT managers in the U.K. need to explore. Mobile VoIP affords the ability to move mobility to a VoIP network. Short range communications can be linked into the company’s network while wider range communications can take place through 3G and 4G (where available in the U.K.) protocols can be used.

Charles Bligh, who is the managing director at TalkTalk Business, said “It’s clear that British IT managers appreciate the importance of connectivity and rare equipping their organizations to reflect this need. However, the on-going in increase in bandwidth-hungry technologies, devices and content means that network managers have to be thinking as much about future needs as well as current ones.”

 The bottom line finding of this survey seems to be two things. First is that the U.K. networks appear to be well funded. However, the problem is that they lack the necessary bandwidth and a few other requirements to be able to fully utilize future trends and needs.