Gigabit City Bristol – Wildseed Studios case study

Wildseed Studios are a production company based in the heart of Bristol, but truly working collaboratively across the globe. Wildseed’s work is diverse, including both television and cinema work; one of their larger projects involves working alongside Disney XD.

Wildseed handle the majority of the conceptual work but rely on production teams in Canada to create the final product. This Cross-Atlantic dynamic demands a reliable internet connection with Skype calls and file sharing a vital part of the shared production process.

Challenge

Collaboration in the creative process is crucial for success at Wildseed. At any one time across the office there will be at least 2 to 3 Skype calls taking place, communicating with teams across the UK and internationally. But it’s not just the VOIP access that stresses the network – file sharing too is an essential business function.

Animations are typically huge graphical files with an average 10-minute episode swelling to a 175GB file – a file that had to be uploaded and downloaded on Wildseed’s inconsistent BT connection. Sometimes, because the connection was so lacking, the upload would have to restart three or four times, and in some extreme cases they had to physically post a harddrive with the full episode across the Atlantic to Canada to be prepped for broadcast.

When for just one project, Wildseed were onboard to deliver 52 episodes of this size, the networking team knew they needed an alternative solution.

Solution

Wildseed found their networking alternative when their building connected to CityFibre’s gigabit network in Bristol through local communications provider Triangle Networks. And soon after it’s installation in May 2016, their business was transformed.

Video communication is now seamless. Where previously they had struggled with intermittent laggy connections that had hampered their ability to collaborate using VOIP solutions, they have now reduced lag by 250% to a level not even noticeable.

File sharing has also switched from being a headache to a business tool. The typical 40GB master fi les that’d be shared multiple times throughout the production process used to take Wildseed 27 ½ hours to download, and even then the transfer would often fail. Now, with a pure fibre connection it takes them a little over 90 minutes.

“Having the speed is great,” explained Chris Pearless, Networking Manager at Wildseed, “but more importantly, the gigabit connection has given us flexibility. Instead of days, we can now make changes in hours. It’s added an agility and quality to the production we haven’t seen before.”

Furthermore, the investment has proven to be more cost effective than their copper 25mbps EFM service from BT. The customer service approach was another revelation, as Chris mentioned, “It’s not like BT, I can talk to Triangle Networks and feel confident they’ll address my query promptly and successfully.”

Wildseed have been so impressed by the service they’ll be looking to install another gigabit connection direct into their premises over the coming months using the new line to host all of the organisation’s managed services.