Gigabit internet is here. For businesses, it can be all about the upload. Ten gigabit download speeds mean everyone in the family can watch different 4K high-definition movies simultaneously. That is useful for businesses, too; but the upload speed can make their businesses race.
With traditional internet, download speeds were usually less than a hundred megabits per second. Upload speeds were necessarily slower, usually only a few percent of the download speed. That’s not the case with The BiG GiG being installed by Whidbey Telecom. Up and down, the speed’s the same; and more than ten times faster than before. That has already made a big difference to local businesses.
Flat Rock Design Group
Based on Whidbey Island, Flat Rock is a building design firm with an emphasis on adaptive and sustainable design. The principal partner, Eric Richmond, lives and works in Langley, WA while his business partner lives in Oregon. Thanks to the BiG GiG Fiber Network, Eric and his partner can communicate in real-time via video conferencing tools. Fast gigabit internet enables them to seamlessly coordinate permits, transfer files, and remotely collaborate with engineers and architects in the field. Given the technical, artistic and specialized nature of their work, a fast and reliable network is essential to their business.
Farage Photography
Jamie Conners of Farage Photography regularly uploads massive photo galleries for her clients. She travels around the country creating artistic, high-quality photos of their events, processes the photos, and then uploads the finished images to online galleries for the clients to pick, choose, and use.
Digital photos can be massive files, and uploading a gallery took too long from home. One workaround was to use a local coffee shop’s WiFi. Even then, the process could take days because she’d have to quit partway to handle family chores or work within a shop’s business hours. A several hour job could stretch into a week. A chance meeting with George Henny (co-CEO of Whidbey Telecom) introduced her to The BiG GiG’s CoWorks space in Langley. Five hundred files flew up onto the internet in under an hour. A week of work time was saved.
Fine Balance Imaging
Joe Menth told a tale of a customer at Fine Balance Imaging, where Joe is part-owner with his mother, Nancy MacFarland. The customer was glad to use the business’ high speed and high resolution scanner to digitize over 400 images for the family’s genealogical research. That took an hour. Uploading them to the rest of the family took less than three minutes, thanks to their gigabit internet access.
Phillips Enterprises
Family-run Phillips Enterprises is a national leader in grocery design and consulting. They have designed some of Washington’s most renowned grocery stores and marketplaces, including two Metropolitan Markets, Uwajimaya in Bellevue, and the District Market at the University of Washington. And they do this with the power of Whidbey Telecom’s BiG GiG Fiber Network. Dan Phillips enjoys a five minute commute by foot to his office in downtown Langley where he works on store designs or web chats with clients all over the country. With gigabit internet speeds, they can enjoy a better quality of life and still manage a national business.
Upload speed is easy to overlook and the data can be hard to visualize, but finishing week-long tasks in an hour, or hour-long tasks in a few minutes is something that saves the most valuable resource we have available – time. It is the tool that can put one business ahead of another, and can save a client time and money, especially if they are paying people by the hour to wait for the bits to dribble up the wires. Fiber is fast, and in business, that’s a smart advantage.
Tom Trimbath is a guest author for Whidbey Telecom. A “fan of the quiet island life,” Tom is a Real Estate Broker (Coldwell Banker Tara Properties), Consultant, Writer, Speaker, Teacher, Photographer, Engineer, Entrepreneur, and all-around Renaissance man.
