Background: Drain Technology UK Ltd is an independent drain maintenance business set up in 2004 by director Paul Ferrito. It has grown from a single van operation to operating a small fleet of vehicles that include a camera van, jetting lorry, off road 4x4 and several site vans. The vast majority of its business is in the construction, commercial and new housing market. 

Size: Drain Technology employs 35 full-time staff.

The Challenge

Paul Ferrito started his business Drain Technology from his home in Abingdon back in 2004. As the business began to take off, Paul moved to a small depot in Chalgrove. Further growth meant another move was required in 2022.

The move to larger premises in Abingdon in 2022 put the company in a much better position to fulfil its potential, as Paul explained. “We’re an expanding, ambitious company working with many large, national customers and we rely on our broadband to communicate with them and to service their requirements.”

It wasn’t long after setting up in Abingdon that they realised the existing broadband speed wasn’t going to cope with their needs. Paul said: “We were running a phone system that was dependent on good wi-fi, we couldn’t afford for this to drop out at various times. We also need to download various design drawings and pdf reports quickly and can’t wait around for the files to be sent.”

Paul added: “In some cases it was taking hours to upload video and large files to cloud-based storage systems so our clients could access them. Even our digital printer was struggling, taking 10 minutes to print one drawing. The situation was totally unsustainable.”

Paul said when he approached another of the Big Four providers to ask if they could help he was told the solution wasn’t simple as they would need to lay new cable.

Paul said: “We needed broadband speeds that matched the speed of growth in our business and instead we found that the broadband was killing our business. It was no laughing matter.”

The Solution

Paul turned to Gigaclear in April 2022 and was relieved to find help was at hand. As there was already a Gigaclear cabinet nearby, all that was required to connect Drain Technology to it was run some extra cabling to the business premises. 

“It was amazing!” said Paul. “Within three months Gigaclear was able to turn it around and install full fibre broadband. Where once it was taking us hours to upload large videos and files it was now taking no time at all. The printer’s happy, the phone system is happy, I’m happy!”

Business Benefits

“We found everyone at Gigaclear very professional. The communication was good and the whole instal process went smoothly. Now, operationally, everything is running smoothly at Drain Technology and we can look forward with confidence to more expansion. They brought peace of mind to a situation that was causing us frustration.”