Co-owner of Advanced IT in Rotorua Steve Kitchener said ultra-fast broadband, which the company had been connected to for almost a year, had changed the way they did business.
One of the main benefits was reliability, which Mr Kitchener couldn't stress enough.
"It enables us to do our work a lot faster because at the end of the day, a lot of our work is done remotely for a lot of our customers so it's allowed us to service our customers in a more efficient way."
Increased productivity meant more money, and expansion of the business' services, he said.
Advanced IT was now endorsing ultra-fast broadband to its customers.
Telecommunications Users' Association New Zealand (TUANZ) chief executive Paul Brislen said small businesses stood to gain the most from ultra-fast broadband. "If you're a medium or a large business . . . it's just a matter of reducing your costs. But if you're a small business, you take the leap from a fairly basic connection that's really designed for consumers ... to the sort of things that your corporate competitors have always had at very little cost.
"That's going to change the way a lot of companies do business."
Fibre-based internet would reduce hour-long tasks to a matter of seconds, and drastically lower costs, he said.
Ultra-fast broadband had cut TUANZ's annual IT bill from $30,000 to $500.
The other "big winner" was the household consumer, as internet use in the home increased every year.
Wellington was the most connected main centre with a quarter of its firms saying they were hooked up to a fibre-based internet network. Auckland had 16 per cent and Christchurch 10 per cent.
"UFB will revolutionise the way business owners use business management tools, including cloud accounting," MYOB's James Scollay said. "It will no doubt result in increased productivity, cost reductions and, in turn, a small and medium-sized enterprises sector that can compete more effectively on both a local and global scale." additional reporting Hamish Fletcher
