The Boston Celtics Team Up With Comcast Business Services for Multi-Site Ethernet and Voice Solution

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Comcast Corporation, one of the nation's leading providers of information and communications products and services, today announced that the Boston Celtics, one of professional basketball's most storied franchises, has selected Comcast Business Class Ethernet and Comcast Business Class PRI Trunks for its data and voice communications needs. Comcast is able to deliver these services due to decades of investment in making its advanced fiber network broadly available to meet the high-speed, high-capacity needs of business customers.

The Comcast Ethernet service will be used to download and transfer bandwidth-intensive video files and images, and to integrate communications between the organization's administrative office in Boston and its practice facility in Waltham, Massachusetts. The Comcast data and voice services will support coaches, scouts and trainers, enabling them to create scouting reports and analyze game film, as well as business, legal and communications professionals that need to be in constant contact to facilitate public appearances, media interviews and other events in real-time.

The Celtics have a long and proud history, having won 17 league championships with many winning seasons and several hall-of-fame players and coaches. Though the team plays its games at the TD Garden, where Comcast provides television and Internet service, its administrative headquarters are located elsewhere in Boston and its practice facility is located west of the city in the suburb of Waltham.  Since the team's most recent championship in 2008, the organization has added more employees to keep up with increased interest from both fans and the media.

Previously, the organization had separate phone systems at each site and used a T3 line from another provider. Having separate voice systems made inter-office calling difficult, and those systems lacked many modern calling features such as caller ID, 4-digit dialing and conference calling. In addition, employees had to log on to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) each time they wanted to connect between sites to access files or schedules. As part of a recent renovation project in its Boston office, the organization's IT staff wanted to standardize all sites on one voice and data provider and to unify the separate IT environments at its different locations.

"Thanks to Comcast, we have integrated our phone systems, as well as our networks. We need to quickly process a great deal of game video on a daily basis, sometimes from as many as fourteen different games from the prior evening, which requires a significant amount of bandwidth," said Jay Wessel, Vice President of Technology, Boston Celtics. "With up to 100 Megabit per second downloads between our two facilities, video files can move quickly between our sites, as well as other player-, game- or event-related information that needs to be handled in real-time."

The new Comcast Business Class Ethernet Private Line (EPL) provides 100 Mbps of bandwidth between the Boston and Waltham locations, providing high-performance file transfer and data access for all employees on a continual basis, regardless of what office they are located in at any given time. In addition, the Celtics use a Comcast Ethernet Dedicated Internet (EDI) connection to provide 50 Mbps of bandwidth at the Celtics' practice facility to enable fast video download – a critical task during the playing season. Comcast is able to deliver these speeds due to decades of investment in building infrastructure to make its advanced network broadly available to meet the high-speed, high-capacity needs of business customers.

Additionally, Comcast Business Class PRI Trunks is utilized over the same high-speed connection to enable unified voice services across the organization. The increased communication speed and integrated phone system also benefits the Celtics' public relations and marketing staff, who need to access the network to respond quickly to media inquiries, and to upload information, images and videos to the Celtics.com website to provide a timely stream of team news and rich media content to fans.

"The Celtics are one of the preeminent teams in basketball, and one of the most successful franchises in all professional sports," said Bill Stemper, President of Comcast Business Services. "To match the team's tradition of excellence, the organization needed an integrated, high-performance voice and data service that allows staff to communicate in real-time and rapidly process all of their video content and information. By standardizing on Comcast Business Class Ethernet for their data needs and Business Class PRI trunks for their voice communication, Celtics employees can collaborate faster, allowing them to focus on serving their fans and the media."

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.

Launched in 2011, 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. Recently awarded the 2012 North American Competitive Strategy Leadership Award for MSO Ethernet Services from Frost & Sullivan, Comcast Metro Ethernet services are significantly faster than standard T1 lines and other legacy technologies, providing scalable bandwidth from 1 Mbps to up to 10 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) in more than 20 major US cities.  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.

Media Contacts:

Drew Miale
Davies Murphy Group
781.418.2438
[email protected]

Doreen Vigue
Comcast
978.848.5650
[email protected]

SOURCE Comcast Corporation