Paul Gee
Director of Moonboom Limited, software solutions developer for iPhone/iPad
Paul has worked as an engineer in the software industry for over 25 years. He is the Director of Moonboom Limited, where he has been developing mobile applications and running his business from home in rural Cowden.
Paul develops software solutions for iPhone/iPad platform and his apps are sold in App Stores internationally. His clients include the BBC and the National Air Traffic Service to name a few!
Good, reliable digital connectivity is essential - not just for Paul’s work, but also in his domestic life where his grandchildren and other family members stream films, play games and generally utilise the benefits that modern technology can bring. His experience of benefitting from the eSussex fibre broadband infrastructure development is best described as a ‘before and after’ one.
Before
Paul was previously on an ADSL service, and his rural location meant that, at best, he could only achieve a download speed of 1.2-2mbps at best. In an effort to improve speeds Paul had invested in a high specification ADSL router, which improved things a little but still only enabled speeds up to 4mbps at the best. This made it important for him to schedule downloads and in particular uploads in his work, with transfers sometimes taking hours to complete.
After
Following completion of works to the Cowden Exchange a Fibre to the Premises solution has been deployed and with it the opportunity for Paul and others in the community to place an order for a superfast service of up to 330mbps, depending on the package chosen. He was quick to take advantage of this and is now connected to fibre and reaping the benefits. Paul said: 'I stayed with my existing Internet Service Provider. They came out to survey my property when I placed the order and discussed options with me, installing the connection point where I wanted. There’s even a battery back-up system so that if power is lost, my broadband connection isn’t.'
The immediate benefits
As Paul explained: "Working on the development of apps, it could typically take 20 minutes to upload files; that is, if the connection didn’t drop out. If a phone call came into the house whilst upload was in progress, it resulted in the broadband connection having to be re-set and for upload to be started again".
Paul is now delighted to report that the situation has completely changed, and with it his work and domestic life has been transformed. Paul selected a package that is now delivering a 60-70 Mbps download with a 19Mbps upload speed compared to the typical 800Kbps of his old ADSL connection, a considerable difference, and one that enables the potential for him to further develop his business.
The long-term benefits 9 months on
"It's hard to imagine life without high speed fibre", Paul explains, "Considerations about the time to download data or perform device or software updates are a thing of the past, within seconds I can have what I need on my desktop."
Paul’s air traffic customers frequently require large datasets of flight data for analysis. With high speed fibre he is now able to share the information readily with them, providing a fast turnaround pulling down hundreds of megabytes of data, processing it locally and then uploading it for distribution.
At the same time, he is permanently connected to the rest of his team in Southampton using a cloud based workspace that allows him to participate in multiple conversations, share documents and content with his colleagues.
In April Paul’s main customer, NATS, launched their flight tracking iPad App, Airspace Explorer which Paul developed for them. With over 40,000 downloads in the UK, it was enthusiastically received by the public and aviation enthusiasts and made the headlines on the BBC news and the national press. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-39558952/plane-tracking-app-explores-airspace-in-3d).
Paul said: "The development and testing of Airspace Explorer became an order of magnitude easier with a high speed connection, I was able to implement changes and feature requests from the customer far quicker, providing them with a prototypes delivered to their iPads in minutes rather than hours compared to my old ADSL connection."
Paul has even had the opportunity to test out the battery backup of his fibre link with a spate of power outages in the local area and is looking to extend standard the 90-minute battery time of his fibre broadband to 10 hours with a separate battery solution.
"I couldn’t go back to ADSL, my 73Mbps fibre is the right combination of speed and cost for now but it is reassuring to know that I have the ability to upgrade to 300Mbps if I need it."
July 2020. Paul has provided a new update, saying that he’s now upgraded to a gigabit connection through his Internet Service Provider; as a result he was perfectly set-up for to work from home during the current Covid19 pandemic, without having to make any adaptions. It's been a seamless transition and enabled him to maintain critical business continuity in a time of uncertainty.
