Mandarin Business Solutions is a web development consultancy based in Coldingham in the Scottish Borders. The company was set up by Mike Clift in 2000 and relocated to Scotland from Buckinghamshire.

“With superfast broadband, I can run my businesses effectively from a rural village in the Borders and not face any restrictions - everything is possible.”

Mike says: “I was used to good broadband speeds in Buckinghamshire and when I first moved to Coldringham, it was a real shock. As a web developer, I rely on fast broadband to be able to carry out the various tasks necessary for the business.”

Mike was delighted when superfast fibre broadband was installed and now has a reliable connection delivering download speeds of around 75 Mbps. He says: “Now everything is so much easier and faster. It is fantastic.”

Work processes are transformed

“Tasks such as installing software on the server, uploading images to website or uploading videos to the internet used to take hours. Now they take seconds. Clients often send me images via the cloud based application, DropBox. Before I had superfast broadband, it took me ages to download images from DropBox and then ages again to upload them onto a website. In fact, it was so slow that I sometimes told clients to put the images on a DVD and post them to me instead. Now this whole process has been transformed and it can all happen almost instantly.”

“Another benefit of superfast broadband is that I can now use video-conferencing with clients and it is super-smooth and stutter-free. I use video-conferencing over What’s App and Google Duo. This really helps improve communications with clients as they can physically point at items and show me what it is they would like. It is just like being in the same room together, even though the client may be hundreds of miles away. That would simply not have been possible at all without superfast broadband.”

Making use of cloud storage

Mike continues: “As well as the faster download speeds, the improved upload speeds are a significant advantage to me. As well as uploading images and videos for my business clients, I can now make full use of cloud storage for my own photos and at last, it is completely trouble-free. Photography is a big hobby of mine, I often take around 50 landscape or wildlife photos a day. It used to take me around five minutes to upload a single photo to the cloud – now it takes less than 10 seconds. You can imagine how much time and frustration this saves me! The first day I had fibre broadband, I uploaded 2000 photos in one day. That would have taken me months before.”

Mike also enjoys the leisure benefits superfast broadband can bring.

He says: “I enjoy being able to stream films and know I can rely on top quality and no buffering.”

Mike concludes: “Superfast broadband is making a huge difference to how I run my business, allowing me to work in new and different ways as well as save time and money. With superfast broadband, I can run my businesses effectively from a rural village in the Borders and not face any restrictions - everything is possible. It is wonderful to be able to experience this as well as be able to take advantage of the latest technology to benefit my hobby and my leisure time.”