Designer photos on Flickr

Tom is Head of Development at D8, a design agency in Glasgow. He lives with his partner Ann and Ann’s 18 year old son, Lewis, in the village of Bridgehouse in West Lothian. He often works from his home office in a wooden cabin at the bottom of the garden, overlooking the pond. Now they have a fibre broadband connection, Tom is able to work from home just as effectively as from the office, boosting his productivity and improving his quality of life.

Staying ahead

Tom says: “I can now rely on broadband speeds of 36 Mbps download, which is more than ten times faster than the speeds we received before. That makes a tremendous difference to the way I can work from home. For example, I recently had to download a huge file from a client that would previously have taken 24 hours! With the fibre broadband connection, it took no longer than two hours, which meant that I could get on with the project and deliver the client what he wanted faster. Design is a competitive industry and speed helps us stay ahead.

“Having fibre broadband will make an even more dramatic difference in winter. On days when it is snowing or there are transport problems, I can continue working from home, without any loss of productivity, rather than try to battle in to the office.”

Productive video calls

“Fibre broadband is also making it so much easier to use Skype. We frequently use video calls to speak to clients, but if I joined a call from home before, it would often break up. Now it is perfect quality. I often want to show a client a website when on a video call but I used to hesitate to do this as it would make the quality even worse. Now, I can show websites and share slides on a video call, and it makes no difference at all to the crystal clear video and audio. This makes it so much easier to have productive meetings with clients over Skype.”

Connecting instantly

Tom adds: “I can also rely on instant connection to the office servers via our Virtual Private Network (VPN). This means I can access all the office files whenever I need them. In the past, if I was going to work from home, I had to plan it in advance and take the files home with me. Now, I do not have to worry about that and can always access whatever I need from the office as well as respond speedily to any unexpected client demands.

“One time I really notice the improvement in speeds when I am making amendments to a website. Now, these copy to the server instantly whereas before there would be a delay of a few minutes each time. Whenever that happened, I would lose concentration and it had a significant impact on productivity overall. Now I can just crack through the work.

Music throughout the house

Tom continues: “As well as changing the way I can work from home, fibre broadband is making a difference to the way we live. Ann and I love music and now we will be able to install a Sonos system and enjoy multi-room music, controlled from our mobile phone or tablet. We can pick music from Spotify and create exactly the mood we want throughout the house and office. For example, I find certain types of music help me concentrate and work faster. Now all this will be at our fingertips.

Connecting all the family

“We are also making full use of catch up TV on iPlayer now, which we could hardly use at all before, because it kept buffering. And, especially with a teenager in the household, it is wonderful to be able to rely on the same fast broadband regardless of how many of us are online at the same time. Lewis is a big user of social media and YouTube. He is interested in Anime, a Japanese film animation style, and he talks to friends and other Anime enthusiasts around the world. So he is really delighted we have the fibre connection as we used to ask him to get off the internet, if we needed the bandwidth for something else. You can imagine his frustration and how pleased we all are that this is in the past.

“It’s also fantastic to be able to use Skype to talk to Ann’s daughter, who is travelling in India. It makes all the difference to be able to have long face to face conversations and even see the hotels she is staying in – and all at no cost!

Tom concludes: “Fibre broadband is making a huge difference to my ability to work from home as well as improving the quality of life for everyone in my family.”

PIC PHIL WILKINSON

info@philwilkinson.net

www.philwilkinson.net

01316186373 - 07740444373

Jeremy Britton, Designer by ZURB

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A shot of Jeremy Britton working at ZURB. The light is fairly bright in the morning time- it makes for a great work environment.

ZURB is a close-knit team of interaction designers and strategists that help companies design better (www.zurb.com).

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