It used to take Golfballs.com an hour and 31 minutes to upload one of its high-definition product demo videos for editing.
Now, it takes 2 minutes and 26 seconds.
Golfballs.com recently became one of the first businesses in Lafayette to connect to Lafayette Utilities System’s Fiber service.
LUS started rolling out its fiber network to business customers in October, and many are just beginning to discover the possibilities for economic development.
“I guess I could draw the parallel to when someone started building the electric utility system to power a light bulb. No one could have envisioned what we use electricity for today,” LUS Director Terry Huval said.
“We’re still on the threshold of what this level of bandwidth will drive in our community.”
Golfballs.com recently started shooting 2- to 4-minute videos of some of its products, but amassed a three-month backlog of videos because of the time it took to get them ready for its website.
Now, the company can upload the 500 megabyte files in minutes, making it viable to outsource them for production.
“Everyone on our team uses the Internet, and everyone on the network gets to do their job a little faster,” Cox said. “Everyone’s a little more efficient, so as a business, we get more done.”
Fiber is also allowing Golfballs.com to do other things it wasn’t able to do before, Cox said.
The company is considering the possibility providing live video customer service on its website, he said.
“There’s probably going to be three or four other things we can do with this technology,” Cox said. “We just don’t know what those things are yet.”
Cox and other business leaders hope to explore new some of the new possibilities this week at FiberFete.
Billed as “a celebration of our connected future,” the three-day conference will bring together representatives from companies such as Google and Cisco, as well as leaders from cities such as Seattle, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia to explore how fiber can improve the lives of residents and enhance business development.
