The phrase “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” is commonly offered to young people as part of the stock preamble to adulthood. For most, it’s a cliche that loses some luster after encountering the repercussions of growing up.
For United Communications customer Brian Hendrix of Fairview, Tennessee, the dividing line between labor and leisure has seemingly always been a blur. Even as a very young child, his experiences as a globetrotting “military brat” served as a primer for his own career in the U.S. Air Force.
“My dad did 20 years in the Air Force, so I absolutely loved my childhood,” Brian recalled. “I went to college for a few years, but I got tired of not being around the military anymore.”
After an eight-year enlistment as a medical specialist, Brian moved his family to Middle Tennessee and embedded himself into the region’s burgeoning healthcare scene, leveraging his Air Force training into a fulfilling career in radiology and nuclear medicine.
Today, Brian is a Senior Linux Engineer for a Boston-based healthcare technology firm—a remote job he loves that’s made possible by having a fast, reliable internet connection at home.
“I’m a person who has a job that I would do as a hobby, so that’s pretty great,” said Brian.
A habitual tinkerer and technophile, Brian’s home office resembles an R&D lab—a tapestry of books, CD binders, computer peripherals, and other gadgets showcasing his many interests and talents.
In addition to roasting his own Ethiopian coffee beans, Brian is a licensed ham radio operator, a certified Tennessee naturalist, and enjoys operating his own weather stations that feed real-time data to a brightly lit display on his bookshelf.
In addition to his personal computer, you might find Brian running software tests on 12 additional single-board computers running in his office.
“I probably have about 80 devices now that connect to the internet at my house,” said Brian, who shares a multi-generational home with his wife as well as their son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. “And if you know anything about millennials and their kids, everything they do is online.”
As the head of a household with serious requirements for internet speed, bandwidth, and reliability, Brian had no choice but to cope with a cable broadband connection until he saw United Communications utility trucks working in his neighborhood. And as soon as the main fiber optic network was installed, Brian didn’t hesitate to sign up.
“After those lines were put in, it was fast,” said Brian. ”Literally, from when I entered my information on the website to request service, they were installing a line from the street to my house within two or three days.”
In contrast to cable internet service, which uses outdated copper lines to split an internet connection among multiple subscribers, fiber broadband provides a dedicated connection to every residential or business customer within a service area while delivering 10 times the speed.
Today, Brian and his family are enjoying gigabit-plus download and upload speeds, the industry’s fastest wireless internet speeds using Wi-Fi 6 technology, and 99.98% uptime reliability with fiber broadband service from United Communications.
“It’s just so fast, it’s incredible,” said Brian, who admitted to feeling some skepticism about switching providers at the start. “I kept my cable modem for about a month-long overlap because if this didn’t work out, I still have to have internet service here.”
Upon returning his cable equipment to the store, a staff member asked why he had decided to make the switch away from their service. “And I said, ‘They’re half the price and twice the speed. I just can’t say no to that,’” he explained.
“We’re in our sixties now, and one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that you get what you pay for,” Brian continued. “The neat thing here is that rule didn’t apply to United Communications. I still can’t believe I’m getting all this for the price I’m paying.”