Jonny Anderson is from Kelso in the Scottish Borders. As the Technical Director of GoodPractice, a Corporate Learning and Development company based in Edinburgh, upgrading to fibre broadband has revolutionised the way he can coordinate his home working and given him a new sense of work-life balance.

Home working

“Since upgrading to fibre I have seen an incredible increase in the speed of my connection and this has revolutionised the way I can work from home.”

Jonny runs a globally distributed team of software developers with staff joining shared-screen ‘pair-programming’ sessions, video calls and continuous messaging from Brazil to Morocco. With clients throughout the world and offices in the UK, Australia and America, it’s critically important that he is able to communicate easily and quickly online.

Jonny says: “I coordinate talented, individual contractors into fluid teams from anywhere in the world. This allows me to build the world class software demanded by the clients of GoodPractice, at a price that is extremely competitive. In order to do this effectively, it is critical that I have the highest possible broadband speed. Bandwidth is the thread that stitches together my team of developers and designers using modern distributed management software such as Slack. It allows me to present my clients with a seamless, always-on service spread across many time zones.”

Before upgrading to fibre broadband Jonny would waste hours trying to coordinate even the simplest business tasks via email. Low bandwidth meant low productivity. Slow internet speeds throttled his ability to work and worse, prevented him from taking advantage of the new working practices emerging in a globally connected world.

Jonny adds: “My internet speed was horrendous before we upgraded, I was lucky if I was able to get even 1.2 Mbps! This meant that often I simply couldn’t do my job from home and so I was forced to physically commute from the Scottish Borders to Edinburgh. It was incredibly frustrating thinking of the time this wasted, time I could have spent being productive; not to mention the expense and the increase in my carbon-footprint.”

Work-life balance

“Since upgrading to fibre I have seen an incredible increase in the speed of my connection and this has revolutionised the way I can work from home; but, perhaps even more importantly, this increase in productivity has come with a dramatic improvement in the real-life time I have with my wife and four children. Like many modern families we all have our tablets, our phones, internet connected televisions and games consoles, not to mention the internet radio and smart speakers like Alexa. It's amazing how much of our day-to-day activity involves connectivity in one form or another.

Therefore, having a fast and reliable internet connection that can cope, not only with the global demands of a distributed software development team, but also the local demands of a large modern family, has made a fundamental improvement in the quality of my life; both the work I produce and the satisfaction I have as a husband and father. Bandwidth, for me, really does equate to quality of life”

“I would encourage everyone to check the Digital Scotland website scotlandsuperfast.com to find out if you can get the service. The difference it has made to me and my family has been incredible.”