Phil Prentice is Chief Officer of the Scotland’s Towns Partnership, an initiative fostering growth and economic development in 500 towns across Scotland. Phil and his wife moved from Glasgow to Inverkip, a historic conservation village on the Clyde coast for lifestyle reasons and they were prepared to accept compromising on connectivity. However, now he has a fibre broadband connection, Phil says he does not need to compromise on broadband speeds after all and he can enjoy ‘the best of all worlds.’

"Fibre broadband will be a major driver of growth and increased productivity throughout Scotland and it is incredibly exciting to experience the benefits first hand."

Dramatic increase in productivity Heading up a team of six people based in different locations across Scotland, Phil appreciates how fibre broadband enables flexible working. “I can work just as effectively from home as from our office which means I can be far more productive. With high speed broadband, it is also straightforward for our team to hold ‘virtual meetings’ using desk top file sharing and video conferencing. We store all team documents in the cloud, so we all have access to them, despite being in different locations. With the fibre broadband connection, it is instant to upload and access documents.

Improved communication

“Video conferencing was sometimes poor quality before, but with the new fibre connection, I can rely on it being sharp and clear. I am sometimes involved in Skype calls with colleagues from overseas, including for example the US and India. It is absolutely fantastic to be able to hold face to face international business meetings from my home by the sea in Inverkip.

“Because we are working with 500 towns across Scotland, including on the islands, video conferencing is an essential tool to be able to communicate effectively. Being able to see someone and their facial expressions is a big advantage over a telephone call as it makes it easier to build rapport and have productive meetings. The distance ceases to be an issue.”

Transforming business potential

“We also make considerable use of video to promote our work. We video all our events, as well as case studies and vox pops. With fibre broadband, it radically decreases the amount of time it takes to send and receive video files. Something that could have taken hours before will now take a couple of minutes. This makes it viable to put video at the heart of our communications. This will help our organisation achieve its ambitions.”

“We are creating a web portal that will be the central hub for our work. With fibre broadband, it is going to be so much faster to upload new files, images and videos to this. The increase in productivity overall is dramatic.”

Improving leisure experiences

Phil adds: “My wife and I also benefit from fibre broadband in our leisure time. I love films and music, so it is great to be able to stream these. In the past, I once cancelled our Netflix subscription because the service was too poor, but now I can rely on brilliant quality and I enjoy having thousands of films at my fingertips. We use the Smart TV, laptop, iPad altogether and when my son and his girlfriend visit, we could easily have up to eight devices online at once. In the past, my son would shout at us to turn off all our devices because he needed more bandwidth! Now, we can all enjoy great broadband speeds, however many of us in the household are online at the same time.

Phil concludes: “Fibre broadband is increasing my personal options and flexibility as well as enabling our organisation to achieve more than it otherwise could, through improved communications and collaboration. I think fibre broadband will be a major driver of growth and increased productivity throughout Scotland and it is incredibly exciting to experience the benefits first hand.”