Source : Perth Now news
More than four in five Australian business still run their systems on residential internet plans, despite rapidly evolving technology offering faster options.
Reliable, fast system access is essential for Project Epic, which provides disability support services and community participation day programs in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire.
Demand grew much quicker than expected after sisters Abbey Johnston and Alana Chandler — one a former pediatric nurse, the other a special education teacher — founded the company in 2022.
“Our needs, technology and internet-wise, are pretty big,” Ms Chandler told AAP.
“We operate 51 weeks a year, and we support probably about 70 participants with disabilities, we’ve now got over 250 shifts a week, and we obviously have to communicate as a team.”
The company’s network is constantly updated and supports access to data, including participants’ pick-up addresses, epilepsy plans, allergy information and incident reports.
“It’s really, really important, everything is online, and we need it to be working,” Ms Chandler said.
Ms Chandler’s brother-in-law Mitch Johnston, who joined initially as a volunteer to build Project Epic’s digital backbone, had recommended switching to a business internet plan.
“It made a big difference,” she said.
“I’m not very techy, but we need to be able to update things and share them with the team in a minute.”
The company now uses artificial intelligence to lighten the load of data entry and analysis.
“It has definitely helped and taken out a lot of the manual hours, and our time is much better spent elsewhere in the business,” Ms Chandler said.
Flexible work arrangements, live networks and artificial intelligence are turning the tide for businesses, with NBN Co reporting a 300 per cent uplift in high-speed business plans in the financial year ending in June 2026.
Almost nine in every 10 Australian businesses were now running hybrid or remote working options, NBN Co’s business products general manager Steve O’Rourke said.
“In terms of productivity, as an employer, you want the output and the experience to be the same in the home as if someone was in the office,” he told AAP.
“The fact that we’ve had such strong growth in these plans really just reflects the fact that the way businesses do things has changed.”
More than two in three businesses use cloud-heavy workflows, which need higher upload speeds generally not included in residential plans.
“If it’s down or it doesn’t work, you can’t work, you can’t transact, you can’t interact,” Mr O’Rourke said.
Back at Project Epic, Ms Chandler noted the improvements weren’t just about efficiency or revenue.
“Our systems being down would be devastating for our young people who look forward to outings,” she said.
“I actually don’t know how we would be able to deliver the quality of service that we do if we didn’t have those systems.”
