Even Hollywood stars benefit from faster internet

THE new offer promises symmetrical upload and download wholesale speeds from 10Mbps to close to 1Gbps.

William Gammon at Cumulus Visual Effects headquarters in Byron Bay.

CUMULUS Visual Effects is reaping the benefits of a superfast internet fibre connection, allowing the Byron Bay film company to work with production companies from all over the world.

Director and owner William Gammon said the Byron Bay company uses an NBN Business Fibre connection at the Byron Industrial Estate.

"That's enable us a whole new level of capabilities," he said.

"We recently had to transfer large an amount of data to the US, an hour of 6K footage through a secure network; we transferred 3.5 terabytes of data in a little over 36 hours.

"That's great. The alternative using ADSL 2 would have taken us two months.

"In the past we would only be able to transfer five terabytes a month."

 

William Gammon at Cumulus Visual Effects headquarters in Byron Bay.

 

Being able to process large amounts of data fast enabled the company to offer film clients overseas solutions that are cheaper and faster, Mr Gammon said.

"In this case, a lead actor who was working on a movie here had to do a pick up shots in Australia for a movie that was getting edited in the USA," he explained.

"That production asked us to shoot in a Northern Rivers set and then we transmitted those high quality images to the production company.

The film executive said that was a better option than asking the actor to travel to the USA for a reshoot.

"Without the capacity to transfer that data in a secure way, the alternative would have been to put it put it on encrypted hard drives, in secured cases, get them to a reputable transfer company an day a premium for that level of security, and put it on an overnight flight, which essentially would have got there 48 hours later."

Mr Gammon's business offers ten full time positions to local skilled professionals, but in busier times that number can grow up to 30 people.

"Having the technical capability to offer secure, fast data to clients in the UK and USA is key for us," he said.

 

Map of NBN Business Fibre coverage in Byron Bay.

 

More than 130 businesses are set to benefit from the establishment of an NBN Business Fibre Zone in Byron Bay.

Enterprise Ethernet is NBN Co's new wholesale product. It has options for prioritised traffic, high capacity and symmetrical upload and download wholesale speeds from 10Mbps

to close to 1Gbps.

The first 130 zones were announced in October and included Ballina and Lismore.