I'm in Australia right now, working remotely 3 days a week from Seattle. My family lives here, and working remotely means I can see my friends and family in the evenings and on weekends, and not use up my vacation time while they're at work anyway. A month is long enough that I can work around other people's schedules to catch up, go away for a weekend with someone, etc instead of being all 'drop everything, I'm visiting!'. It's inconvenient being 18 hours off the home timezone, but it's not that bad and I would (will) do it again. The restrictions on communication have caused some trouble but mostly exposed holes where people aren't using expected status tools to keep records up to date, which is good to know anyway. Some of my coworkers I have gone away with on real vacations, so sharing an apartment with them for a bit doesn't sound that bad at all.

For me, visiting foreign lands for a week of sightseeing is lame anyway - I'd much rather go live there for a month in a regular rhythm, going grocery shopping and maybe for a drink after work. Different strokes.

They didn't make it compulsory, different people enjoy different things. It sounds pretty good to me but I know that there would be others that would hate the idea.