Staying connected through Covid’s ‘second wave’
Tunio Zafer, Founder and CEO of pCloud, shows how platforms such as his can help people stay connected during the Covid-19 lockdowns.
The increasing introductions of further lockdowns across Europe brought about by the long-predicted ‘second wave’ of Covid-19 cases is already starting to have an unsettling impact on schools, businesses, families and friends.
In the UK alone, more than 10 million people are under strict local lockdowns, with the threat of further nationwide measures not being ruled out by the Government.
In Birmingham for example, the UK’s second biggest city, two households are not allowed to mix, which has put a huge strain on families already starved of contact in 2020.
It is within this climate that file sharing and cloud storage platforms have offered a crucial bridge, allowing families and friends to share those precious memories they aren’t able to make together.
Since swathes of Europe first went into lockdown in the Spring, more than a billion files have been uploaded to pCloud, which has witnessed 20% growth in the UK, 18% in France and 15% in Germany.
With families and businesses now reliant upon platforms such as pCloud to connect, it is clear the one size cannot fit all.
For instance, a service that suits a tech-savvy millennial may not work quite so well with their parents, or grandparents, or friends spread across the globe. And it is here that flexibility and choice become crucial.
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Other file sharing and cloud storage platforms see their customers as little more than an upsell opportunity. Worse, the control the user retains over their data is not what you think it might be.
There has undoubtedly been a gradual erosion of trust in big tech firms in recent years, which in recent times has accelerated. Growing evidence of this emerged recently when Italy’s competition authority decided to take action, investigating Apple, Google and Dropbox for a perceived failure to explain how customer data is used.
pCloud, by contrast, is all about consumer choice, recently announcing the opening of a new European data centre in Luxembourg, built to give customers a choice over where their data is held. With a variety of service offerings, from a free 10GB of storage through to lifetime plans, pCloud is focussed on providing scalable solutions based on customers’ specific needs. Furthermore, with client-side encryption, users are always in control of their files, not the other way around.
Until a vaccine is rolled out, the threat of lockdowns that tear families and businesses apart will never go away. Being able to connect people at this challenging time is a source of huge pride for the team at pCloud. With every file shared, a moment or memory can be saved for a lifetime.
