Businesses making it with broadband

The NZ Herald has a series on how high speed internet can enable new ways of running a business, and bring international developments to New Zealand

What's the point of faster broadband? Here's what (Introduction)

Eye on the sky: Awarua Station

In the depths of Southland, a small facility is helping unmanned European Space Agency missions take supplies to the International Space Station. Part of the facility's essential infrastructure is a wireless broadband connection.

Found in translation: Tras@ction

Mackie's business, Trans@ction, which he'd started in 1990 in Surrey, outside London, depended on internet access. From the outset, the business used contract translators in New Zealand, who would take advantage of the time difference for overnight delivery of work to British and European customers.
The company is small, but in translating millions of words a year over a couple of decades has put millions of dollars into the New Zealand economy, Mackie says.

In the long run: Marathon Photos

Until an optical fibre connection became available, Kay says the company relied on a "frustratingly slow" ADSL connection of the type most residential broadband subscribers have.
That meant photos taken on a Sunday weren't available online until Wednesday. With fibre, the 230,000 images from Sydney's City2Surf event on August 8 were online the following morning.

Online wine: La Vinotheque

How about using it to keep tabs on a business on a smallish island in the Pacific Ocean? The real question might be, if you run a string of wine shops in Noumea, as does Dominique Annonier, why would you ever want to leave your New Caledonian paradise?

Business without walls: Voco

"Every time we've lurched to another level and reconsidered whether we need premises, it has seemed too much like spending money on a place for people to go and do nothing," Foley says. "Our folk are most productive when they're with clients."
Voco specialises in helping customers merge their computing and telecommunications, and has drawn on its own expertise to build a network of consultants who work from home offices.
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"We spend money on stuff that coalesces the team rather than on the hard trappings of traditional corporate business."