Next month he is moving from Waipapa Rd to the centre of Kerikeri, partly because he needs more space but also so he can hook up straight away when UFB does arrive.
He recently lost a deal in the Baltic states because he was unable to send a "patch" (a segment from a show that needs changing) in time. Other deals that got away were in France and Italy, each worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Customers were no longer willing to wait for a series to arrive by courier, instead demanding it straight away via the internet.
Sometimes the problem was speed, other times it was reliability. Often an upload would be almost complete when the connection dropped out, forcing him to start again.
"Outside New Zealand people may question our professionalism when we say we'll get something to them in an hour, and then we can't do it."
He could solve the problem by moving to Whangarei or Auckland but didn't want to move while his children were settled in local schools. He was also reluctant to take jobs out of the Far North.
His business, Tightlines TV, employs six people and will expand to eight by January. His next plan is to move into immediate online broadcasting but can't do that until he has UFB.
"Loads of small to medium-sized business these days, not just TV, don't trade in hard goods. Everything's done over the internet. If Kerikeri had UFB I'm sure business owners in Auckland would be looking at their leases and their equity, and moving up here.
"The government is banging on about getting people out of the cities into the regions - if they want to do that, they should remove the roadblocks."
New Zealand First IT spokeswoman Tracey Martin said internet speeds in Northland had dropped drastically since last year as internet service providers signed up new customers without regard to existing ones.
"The ITM Fishing Show, a business that brings New Zealand to the world through a popular TV programme, wants to expand but its productivity is limited by poor internet speeds. This owner needs to deliver high-definition media around the world but he can't. If Kerikeri doesn't get ultra-fast broadband the business can't continue in the North and employ more people," she said.
UFB promises download speeds of up to 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 50Mbps. The best upload speed at Tightlines TV yesterday - not bad for Waipapa Rd standards - was 3Mbps.
