Printer finds a speedier way

Impression IT, based St Leonards-on-Sea, was one of the first beneficiaries of a South-East England Development Agency (Seeda) scheme encourage businesses pilot broadband through satellite.

The scheme provides grants of £1,066 to the first 100 companies in the Hastings and Rother area submitting an application to new media agency Wired Sussex.

Impression IT founder John Davis previously used an ISDN line download customer print files, which could be large as 32Mb.

He said: "The problem with ISDN is it is very slow. A very large file can take from two to three hours to download and, while this is happening, you have to keep your eye things because if there a break in transmission, the whole job stops and you fall further behind schedule."

The company specialises in the production training materials, conference packs, books and short-run paperbacks.

Its customers include Ken Blanchard, author the One Minute Manager.

Since installing satellite broadband it has reduced the time it takes to download print files several minutes.

Mr Davis said this, and because the connection always on, made it much easier to fulfil the promise of print on demand.

The ISDN connection gave the wrong impression to customers, He said: "Most of my customers are in areas with good broadband access, such as Brighton.

Not only did ISDN take hours to download files, it also gave customers the impression I was behind the times.

The broadband connection was up-and-running in about three weeks.

Mr Davis attended Seeda's satellite broadband evening on May 30 and by June 21 he was accessing the internet.

Once his grant was approved by Wired Sussex, Mr Davis had to wait ten days before BT installed the dish, which had to be cleared with the Radio Agency to ensure it did not interfere with other wireless service users.

Mr Davis said: "Broadband is the key to meeting impossible deadlines and the Seeda satellite broadband grant has been a real catalyst."

www.impressionit.co.uk
www.wiredsussex.com