How fibre has changed my life

When I first heard my neighbourhood was getting fibre, I filled out a pre-order immediately. I followed the time frames, sent emails, made follow up calls … everything you can think of to show my interest. After months of waiting, I was finally connected in July 2016.

Seven months later, I can confirm, fibre has changed my life. It started with the little things. As a writer, I use the cloud to save all my work, but this was a lesson I learnt after my primary work device got stolen and I lost all my original content saved on the hard drive. It’s so easy to take things for granted – like the fact that your content will always sit on your hard drive and be available at all times. I now write straight to Dropbox when I’m not using Google Drive. Office Online has Dropbox integration that lets anyone co-edit documents. But it doesn’t really matter whether you use Google or Microsoft – both offer the same features.

By saving all documents to the cloud, I no longer carry around flash drives or portable drives like I did in the past. In fact, I have a bunch of hard drives sitting and collecting dust. About eight years ago, I was all about portable storage, and purchased a new drive almost every year. Most of those drives are filled with movies and TV series from way back when, which brings me to my next point of why I don’t download videos anymore; well, certainly not the way I used to before getting fibre.

Most of the content I now consume is through streaming, which makes complete sense if you’re on fibre.

It has even changed my habits; I used to download shows weekly as they came out, but over the last couple of years I’ve shifted to watching content whenever I felt like. I previously had a WiMAX internet connection, which was also suitable for streaming, but fibre just took things to the next level.

I prefer binge-watching shows because it just makes sense. I feel like I don’t have the patience to wait for new episodes each week. There are probably a handful I still watch weekly when they air, but for the most part, I’m browsing catalogues of content from streaming services I’ve signed up to. You don’t feel the buffer; sure, it’s taking place in the background, but you don’t notice because content has already loaded onto your screen within a few seconds.

I personally don’t think that one streaming service should be regarded as better than the next. There are usually geographic filters that come into play, but for the most part, how much content can you consume?

If you can’t pick between two major streaming services, why not sign up to both? It is certainly cheaper than paying for a satellite TV subscription in South Africa.

Streaming allows me to go back and watch old favourites like Friends, over and over. It’s my favourite “background” comedy that I don’t have to pay full attention to. In case you’re wondering, all 10 seasons of Friends are available on Showmax. I have the complete DVD box set, which I haven’t touched in years because streaming is so effortless.

The same goes for my old CDs. I stream songs through Apple Music. If you have a fibre connection, it’s a no brainer to stream music. I used to purchase albums digitally, which took up space on my device. With streaming, I no longer have to load the bulk of my MP3 collection on my smartphone or carry an iPod. This has noticeably freed up space on my handset. I load some new albums every now and then, and have a bunch of playlists saved for offline play. It’s somewhat less pressurising knowing you have access to almost any artist (dependent on the streaming service you subscribe to) at any time. It means there’s no need to carry around every single track you own.

Ditto for my photo albums. With fibre, you have no reason not to back up albums on the cloud. I have iCloud set up so that around midnight, my new photos for the day get backed up. Seamless. I’d go as far as saying it’s the first thing you should set up after getting a fibre connection. Should anything happen to your handset, you will always have backups.

Essentially, fibre has cut out all the bulk in my life. I don’t need to carry around hard drives or flash drives and I certainly don’t feel like I’m running out of space anymore. All my own content is on the cloud, and everything else gets streamed.