Five years ago, thousands gathered in downtown Greenville to form a glowstick-fueled Google logo aimed at winning the tech giant’s gift of high-speed Internet. Today, competitor AT&T plans to fill that void by rolling out Internet speeds more than 15 times the maximum available with its GigaPower service.
Though it’s a little late, the availability of gigabit Internet could boost the Upstate’s tech hub and shape where we live, according to Greenville business leaders.
“In some ways, it is the difference between dialup Internet and today’s speed Internet,” said Gnoso CEO Peter Waldschmidt. “It wasn’t always obvious. You could still get your email, but… Gigabit fiber, as far as computing infrastructure, it’s really the future.”
Waldschmidt was one of the primary organizers of 2010’s ultimately unsuccessful gigabit campaign. The city Google chose for its first run of Google Fiber, Kansas City, drew companies, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs just to take advantage of it, he said. “It’s a pretty powerful thing.”
But why? For Damient Stevens, founder and CEO of Greenville data backup and disaster recovery firm Servosity, high-speed Internet isn’t just fast. It gives people and businesses more capabilities, such as streaming services, applications and software programs, that today’s Greenville Internet wouldn’t support.
Real-time collaboration on large files such as medical scans, engineering files and architectural plans can drastically accelerate the pace of decisions and diagnoses, not to mention make telecommuting significantly more feasible, said Stevens. The service footprint could even change where people live.
“If AT&T offered the high-speed Internet in a certain area of Greenville and not others … I’d move,” said Stevens, who likened gigabit accessibility to highway infrastructure and electricity. “I’d sell my house and move. This is as important as the quality of the schools and the quality of the neighborhood.”
But like highway systems, infrastructure is expensive, especially for smaller businesses. For example, Stevens says his office pays $4,000 a month for gigabit speeds.
“We have gigabit at our office today, which just shows you have the capability, but [current gigabit service providers] have a monopoly on it,” he says. “There’s absolutely no reason, technical or economic, that Charter or AT&T couldn’t provide that service today.”
According to Jeff Childers, CTO of Greenville software firm Foxfire, his company would have to run servers out of their office if they didn’t have access to fiber. Instead, Foxfire uses another Greenville firm, Immedion, and can focus time and energy on other services, he said.
“It’s a definite catalyst or accelerator,” Childers said, noting gigabit access was one of the reasons Foxfire relocated to the Bank of America building. “[Fiber] is a great attraction to a lot of technology companies. We could have these kinds of places all over town.”
For Servosity, the company’s investment in high-speed Internet is attractive to potential hires, particularly when competing with giants such as Microsoft and Google for elite talent, said Stevens. Within the last few months, Servosity recruited a highly technical employee partially because he could do more, faster, Stevens said.
“He chose to relocate his family here, and one of the reasons was gigabit,” he said. “The first leg is what they’re doing. The second is the quality of life, like downtown. That third leg is the high-speed Internet… For some people, that’s as important to them as having a vibrant downtown.”
