David Foubister is a web data specialist providing consultancy services from his home office in Huntly in Aberdeenshire. Clients include the Scottish Government and others, mainly within the agriculture, forestry and oil industries.

“Fast download speeds are great but it’s the fast upload speeds that are the unsung hero as far as I am concerned”

David says: “Fibre broadband has made a massive difference to me. It has put an end to all the hand wringing and it has lowered my blood pressure!”

David explains: “Due to the nature of my business, I often have to upload large data files. Before I had fibre broadband, my upload speeds were less than 1Mbps. This meant that sometimes it could take literally hours to upload. The loss in productivity was shocking.

Boosting productivity

“My new fibre broadband connection reliably provides speeds of 74 Mbps download and 18 Mbps upload. It is the improvement in the upload speeds that is the most dramatic for me. My old connection gave me around 18 Mbps download, so I am now getting a fourfold increase in download speeds and a whopping twenty fold increase in upload speeds. This twenty fold increase is fantastic news for me, saving me an incredible amount of time and boosting my productivity no end.”

Amazing upload speeds

David continues: “I am almost certain that most people do not appreciate how amazing the upload speeds you get with fibre broadband are! The focus always tends to be on the headline download speeds but actually the improvement in upload speeds is even more important for some people. As well as for businesses like mine, there are so many things that people want to do nowadays that depend on uploading to the internet. One everyday example is if you want to upload a video from your smartphone or iPad onto social media. That could take ages unless you have a fibre broadband connection.

Opening up new opportunities

“With fast upload speeds you can also take advantage of the cloud for storage of photos, or use the cloud to back up your data online. Because faster upload speeds are now becoming available, this makes cloud storage viable for the first time for most people. Being able to use the cloud is a real game changer.

“VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony is another application that benefits from fast upload speeds and is making a big difference for many businesses, saving them a lot of money compared with fixed telephone lines.

Whole family online together

“Apart from fast upload, the other big benefit for me and other home based businesses is that it does not matter how many people in the family are online at the same time. My wife uses Skype to keep in touch with family in Australia and she loves the improvement in the quality of the connection now we have fibre broadband.

Helping the community

I have also enabled wireless connections from our property to a neighbouring community bookshop. And even if my wife and the bookshop are both online, it makes no difference at all to the fantastic broadband speeds I enjoy.”

David concludes: “Fibre broadband is helping me increase productivity and generally saving me untold amounts of frustration. Fast download speeds are great but it’s the fast upload speeds that are the unsung hero as far as I am concerned.”