{"id":705,"date":"2018-07-22T20:55:32","date_gmt":"2018-07-22T08:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wispa.nz\/?p=705"},"modified":"2019-07-07T20:42:28","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T08:42:28","slug":"scottish-inventiveness-led-to-velocitynet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wispa.nz\/?p=705","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Inventiveness Led To Velocitynet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Velocitynet<\/a> –\u00a0A WISP profile by Ernie Newman.<\/p>\n

\"Velocity
Velocity founder and owner Trevor Fulton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Velocitynet owner Trevor Fulton is a natural inventor. He invented a cordless jug and cordless iron many years ahead of Kambrook. Nowadays he\u2019s focused on beating mainstream national phone companies to the gun by offering Southlanders, and others, a superior broadband service.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trevor\u2019s very obviously a Southlander – you\u2019ve only got to hear him roll his tongue round a term like \u201cbroadband router\u201d to work that out. But his heritage is Scots. His laid back, easy style and ready sense of humour seem absolutely at home in the crisp but bitterly cold southern winter.<\/p>\n

Having retired at a young age in 2011, as a qualified electrician with a successful alarm installation and monitoring business, Trevor hit on the idea of a wireless ISP covering rural Southland. He learned about WISP services and technology over the Internet, went back for some university training, and visited several WISPs around the regions of New Zealand to pick their brains. Armed with those practical insights, and after practicing by connecting his home to his office, he started Velocitynet.<\/p>\n

Put like that, it all sounds so easy.<\/p>\n

For about three years Velocitynet grew slowly, somewhere on the cusp between a hobby and a serious business. Then in 2014 Trevor was joined by Nigel Ferguson, previously a senior network engineer with the Southland District Council. \u201cThat\u2019s when we started getting seriously commercial,\u201d Trevor says. \u201cI hadn\u2019t really known what I was doing \u2013 I was copying others and off the Internet and hoping for the best. Nigel brought serious engineering expertise from his role at the Council.\u201d<\/p>\n

Velocity\u2019s first wireless site was at Forest Hill near Winton, close to Trevor\u2019s home. A tv station had occupied the site but gone out of business, so Velocity joined with a local technology business to take the site over. Meanwhile Velocity did a deal to buy fibre bandwidth from a local school, long before the Ministry of Education came up with the same idea and officially sanctioned it.<\/p>\n

From there it was all forward progress. Trevor became adept at building wireless sites. He could do one entirely on his own in 2 days, driving home by a different route each time putting sales flyers into letterboxes. Pamphlets, and the resulting word of mouth in each community, drove Velocity strongly into the market.<\/p>\n

Early builds included the areas of Ferndale, Mataura, Clinton, and Limehills. Trevor\u2019s inventiveness can be seen in some of the sites which occupy imaginative locations such as the roof of a fertiliser shed and on top of a grain silo. They work perfectly! Lumsden followed, not quite such a happy story as Vodafone turned up in the town a month later to compete using the government-subsidised RBI1 cellular Internet service.<\/p>\n

\"Velocity\u2019s
Velocity\u2019s Nigel Ferguson services a typical Velocity.net site at Lime Hills<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile as the business grew the staff compliment grew alongside. Trevor is clearly proud of the team he\u2019s built around him. \u201cMaria in accounts has been with me for 23 years,\u201d he tells me, \u201cand database engineer Max is undoubtedly one the best in the country.\u201d Dennis on sales, Nicola on reception, and engineer James complete the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cService is what sells,\u201d he says \u2013 \u201cthe phone is always answered within 3 rings.\u201d Take that, mainstream phone companies \u2013 customers from the North Island ring Velocity because they can\u2019t get Spark or Vodafone to answer their calls. That\u2019s enabled Velocity to sell fibre services as well as copper-based DSL connections throughout the country \u2013 Velocity goes in with a competitive quote, couriers a DSL router to the customer, and away they go.<\/p>\n

Fibre is a bit more tricky but depending on location it can be done. The jewels in Velocity\u2019s fibre offering include a private fibre to the satellite tracking station, a fully fibre ducted subdivision on the outskirts of Wanaka, and another under construction in Queenstown with over 600 customers. And the company has many bespoke tailored deals for individual customers locally and overseas \u2013 helped again by its owner\u2019s inventive streak.<\/p>\n

Put all that together, add in a sizeable data centre, and you have a highly successful business with 1500 customers, 13 wireless sites, and a range of technologies for sale. Velocity is here to stay for Southlanders and those further afield.<\/p>\n

\"Customer
Customer Kathy Wilson in her fruit shop on the outskirts of Invercargill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Velocitynet customer Kathy Wilson is delighted to have decent connectivity at last.
\nBefore that, Kathy had dial up Internet through Spark at her home, and no connectivity in her fruit shop. The trouble was that her area, Ryal Bush, had one of Spark\u2019s oldest exchanges with no plans for an upgrade, and the cellular coverage was equally bad. With three teenagers at home all needing Internet access to do their homework, and immersed in Google classrooms, that simply didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cNow we have 100% reliability for both home and the business,\u201d Kathy says. \u201cEFTPOS works. We have an antenna. We\u2019re about to connect the dairy shed as well. And the kids are happy!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Trailer
Trailer designer and builder Colin Hitchens shows a computer design of a bespoke trailer to a customer over the Internet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Colin Hitchen\u2019s company Lochiel Engineering is famous for its trailers. It\u2019s in a hard-to-find corner of rural Southland. But that doesn\u2019t matter. Rarely does a client come through the door – most describe the trailer they want, Colin designs it on an electronic tool that turns the design into a drawing, and the customer goes on line and buys off the drawing. The image is so real that many customers think it\u2019s a photo of a trailer already built.<\/p>\n

For that reason Lochiel is a very big Internet user. So big that Velocity is now putting in a fibre connection to the factory, which will also pass a number of rural residences.
\n\u201cI hadn\u2019t heard about Velocity until I dug deep,\u201d Colin says. \u201cI was on Vodafone\u2019s RBI1 connectivity, but it was very weather-dependent. I\u2019m very glad I found Velocity \u2013 they are very consistent and responsive. Its an excellent relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Velocitynet<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Velocitynet –\u00a0A WISP profile by Ernie Newman. Velocitynet owner Trevor Fulton is a natural inventor. He invented a cordless jug and cordless iron many years ahead of Kambrook. Nowadays he\u2019s focused on beating mainstream national phone companies to the gun by offering Southlanders, and others, a superior broadband service.   Trevor\u2019s very obviously a Southlander … <\/p>\n

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