Having 1Gbps Internet has been an amazing opportunity for my home and business. One of our greatest goals is to work smarter, not harder, and having such impressive Internet speed makes that possible in so many ways. I run a company that rents and supports digital cinema cameras. They are used to shoot everything from local commercials to 3D Hollywood blockbusters. The cameras shoot lots of data, day in and day out, some times as high as 1 Terabyte per hour.

Recently, we had a client use one of our cameras to shoot a commercial. After spending all day making backups of their data (about 500GB) they returned the equipment, including the media cards. During their edit of the material they noticed that they had a bad copy of the data off of one of the cards. They were trying to figure out what the problem was. I called them on the phone and talked about options for getting them a new copy of the information. They reminded me that in the past, we had just used our FTP site to host files for them. Our FTP site had worked great for them in the past, so why not use it now?

So, I used my 1G UTOPIA connection to upload several hundred Gigabytes of information to our FTP site for them to download. Think of it this way: I uploaded the equivalent of about 25,000 high resolution photos in a very short period of time. The incredible thing is that I was still able to use my connection to stream Netflix for my kids and to surf the web without any issues. The opportunity to run a data-intensive business, while still maintaining all our normal Internet and network usage, is what really separates UTOPIA from other providers.

Because we have a symmetrical connection (our upload speed is the same as our download speed), we have an upload speed that is several hundred times faster than most people. We have the ability to get any information we need to clients all over the world, in a very efficient and affordable manner.

I really love having such a fast connection, especially for occasions like this. Had we not been able to move that much data over our Internet connection, I would have had to procure a hard drive, transfer all the information to it, then arrange to have it taken to the client (who is often on the other side of the world). That may work for some people, but it doesn’t work in an industry with demanding timelines and massive file sizes. Our Internet connection sets us apart from others in the industry and gives us that extra “edge.”

All of us could work smarter, and not harder, if every business and home in America had such ready and instant access to “the cloud.” Our fiber connection makes that possible.

Steve Freebairn
Freehill Productions
www.FreehillProductions.com