Joshua Jeffery, owner of Reframed Media, and Chris Bran, owner of the Print Room, said they had noticed a positive surge around Dunedin over the past six months as people realised what gigabit technology could do.
Both businesses operated from the same South Dunedin building, and the men said yesterday the new technology had slashed their overheads and resulted in massive market expansion.
Mr Bran (25) said some 40% of his screen-printing business now came from outside Dunedin, a move that correlated with the Print Room switching to gigabit speeds earlier this year.
Those speeds meant people could now send extremely high-quality digital files to his business from anywhere in the country, which he could then print straight from his computer screen.
While shipping costs were higher with national customers, his significant savings in overheads more than made up for those expenses, he said.
''That means we can operate now on a national scale. We couldn't before. Before, we were reliant on people coming to our door.''
Mr Bran said the technology had the ability to transform Dunedin economically.
''Some people think Dunedin, and how far south it is geographically, means you're out of the loop. But this gives us a lot more chance nationally and internationally. Our overheads are a hell of a lot lower than most other screen printers in big cities.''
Mr Jeffery (27) said his video editing and digital content business could now operate entirely in the cloud, doing away with the need for expensive computer hardware.
The file sizes they dealt with often took up to 14 hours to transfer from the cloud to their computers before they switched to gigabit speeds. Now it could be done in as little as two hours.
The resulting productivity kick had been ''huge'', he said.
Gigabit speeds also allowed high quality video conferencing, which was ''breaking down the borders'' between Dunedin companies and potential clients.
That had effectively removed Dunedin's isolation, negated the need to travel, and gave businesses growth opportunities ''far beyond the city borders'', Mr Jeffery said.
