Folsom Cordova Unified School District Uses New Technology to Move into Digital Era of Education, Distance Learning and Improved Disaster Recovery

SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Comcast Corporation, one of the nation's leading providers of entertainment, information and communications products and services, today announced that Folsom Cordova Unified School District (FCUSD) upgraded its network infrastructure connecting 21 of its facilities with a 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Comcast Business Class Ethernet service.

Prior to Comcast, FCUSD connected its schools using a costly and inflexible network of T1 lines offering limited capacity of 1.5 Megabits per second (Mbps), too slow to effectively support the voice, video and data needs of each school or allow teachers to augment their curriculum with online resources. With the ultra-fast 1 Gbps Ethernet service from Comcast, students, teachers and administrators have a powerful, scalable network platform to easily support operational data and help teachers expand learning opportunities through online resources, educational tools and applications. Previously, video content had to be downloaded from each server, making it cumbersome to use in the classroom. With a more robust network, students and teachers can take advantage of on-demand digital video solutions, enabling advanced video conferencing and video streaming applications and improving the district's distance learning initiatives.

"We firmly believe technology can have a positive impact on the way students learn and we're always looking for ways to implement more online resources and tools into our curriculum," said Joe Jenkins, chief technology officer, Folsom Cordova School District. "We needed a network that could support this type of online environment and the bandwidth-intensive applications we use to help students learn. Comcast Business Class Ethernet not only gives us the speed we need now, but is scalable to support us well into the future."

In addition to offering new educational opportunities for students and teachers, the Ethernet service also provides significant operational benefits for the district. Better network throughput allows the IT team to centralize 70 percent of the district's data, drastically improving transmission speeds and data access by teachers, administrators and staff. The network upgrade also facilitated a centralized data management strategy and afforded improvements in disaster planning via off-site data backup applications. With the new off-site data recovery plan, FCUSD was able to replace a tape backup system, thereby cutting the time necessary to securely backup its entire 31 facilities by 50 percent.

Compounding the district's IT problem was the fact that reduced funding levels challenged the IT staff to maximize their available resources. Comcast was able to deploy a robust network specifically-designed for FCUSD, all while working within the budgetary framework established by the district, E-Rate and the California Teleconnect Fund. In addition, Comcast completed the project within an aggressive three-month timeframe.

"Folsom Cordova is a great example of an organization with many locations and high data traffic, which is exactly what our Ethernet Network Service is best suited for," said Mark O'Leary, Vice President of Business Services for California. "Education is an important part of our country's future, and giving students, teachers and school administrators the ability to use technology to improve the learning experience can have lasting benefits in the local community and beyond."

About Folsom Cordova Unified School District

The Folsom Cordova Unified School District serves 19,500 students via 19 elementary schools, four middle schools, three comprehensive high schools, two alternative high schools, one community day school and one community charter school. The District's boundaries include the cities of Folsom and Rancho Cordova, California. Folsom Cordova Unified School District employs more than 1,760 people and is proud to have the highest number of National Board Certified teachers in the region. FCUSD has a rich tradition of staff development and the emphasis on continual improvement encourages employees to learn new and effective strategies necessary to address the diverse needs of all students.

About Comcast Business Services
Comcast Business Services, a unit of Comcast Cable, provides advanced communication solutions to help organizations of all sizes meet their business objectives. Through a modern, advanced network that is backed by 24/7 technical support, Comcast delivers Business Class Internet, TV and Voice services for cost-effective, simplified communications management.

The Comcast Business Class Ethernet suite offers high-performance point-to-point and multi-point Metro Ethernet services with the capacity to deliver cloud computing, software-as-a-service, business continuity/disaster recovery and other bandwidth-intensive applications. Comcast Metro Ethernet services are significantly faster than standard T1 lines and other legacy technologies, providing scalable bandwidth from 1 Mbps up to 10 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) in more than 20 major US markets. For more information, call 866-429-3085 or visit http://business.comcast.com/enterprise.  

About Comcast Cable
Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) (www.comcast.com) is one of the nation's leading providers of entertainment, information and communications products and services. Comcast is principally involved in the operation of cable systems through Comcast Cable and in the development, production and distribution of entertainment, news, sports and other content for global audiences through NBCUniversal. Comcast Cable is one of the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone providers to residential and business customers. Comcast is the majority owner and manager of NBCUniversal, which owns and operates entertainment and news cable networks, the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, local television station groups, television production operations, a major motion picture company and theme parks.

SOURCE Comcast