The Walker School Turns to Comcast Business Class Ethernet to Power Students' Digital Learning

ATLANTA, Nov. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Comcast today announced that The Walker School, a college-preparatory pre-K-12 independent school in metro Atlanta, is using Comcast Business Class Ethernet to provide additional bandwidth at a lower cost as the school continues to grow its use of online learning tools and applications across a seven-building campus.

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Besides powering more iPads and cloud-based applications on campus, the new Ethernet service also supports the school's online systems for creating and recording report cards, grade books, attendance, group collaboration, and communicating with students and parents.

With more than 1,000 students, 180 faculty and staff, and 400 computers for accessing the Internet, educational applications and online resources, The Walker School had seen a significant increase in data traffic on its network. In addition, the school's Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) support meant there were typically 100-150 mobile devices simultaneously on the network accessing the Internet, educational applications, or other content. As a result, the school's previous 15 Mbps Internet connection was getting bogged down, especially during peak hours of the school day.

To address its growing bandwidth needs, The Walker School's Information Technology (IT) department started speaking with area schools about their service providers and received a lot of positive feedback that Comcast was able to provide faster connectivity at competitive prices. After researching their options, the school selected Comcast to install a fiber network connection to its campus with a 100 Mbps Internet service. The installation was completed during summer break and students and staff returning for the new school year remarked on the noticeable improvement in Internet speed and connectivity. The Walker School is now getting seven times more bandwidth while its cost per megabit per second has dropped 76 percent.

"We experienced periodic downtime with our previous vendor, and it was important for us to have a more stable connection, especially with more and more devices accessing the Internet," said Kerry Bossak, director of technology for The Walker School.  "While the increased bandwidth and guaranteed network uptime were important factors in switching to Comcast Business Class, the cost advantage is a big deal for us because it means we have the bandwidth to support our technology in education initiatives while saving money to invest in other areas of education."

The Walker School recognizes the importance of embracing and integrating technology tools, applications and devices into all aspects of student life, therefore bandwidth capacity will always be an important issue for the IT department. Another reason for moving to Comcast Business Class Ethernet was the ability for The Walker School to increase bandwidth whenever needed, often by simply making a phone call to Comcast, so that students, teachers and staff always have access to the educational tools and resources they need to focus on running the school and learning.

"As more schools move to online learning resources and integrating connected devices into the curriculum through programs such as BYOD, having fast and reliable Internet connectivity is essentially the blackboard and chalk equivalent of 21^st century classrooms," said Bob Deckard, regional vice president, Comcast Business Services, Atlanta. "Because our Ethernet services are delivered across our modern fiber-based network, we are able to provide reliable, high-performance connectivity to our customers that can easily scale up as their bandwidth demands change."

About The Walker School
The Walker School is the college-preparatory independent school for families seeking an engaging educational experience within an intimately scaled, caring and diverse community where opportunities abound and meaningful relationships inspire transformative learning.

For more information, call 678-581-6891 or visit thewalkerschool.org.

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. Comcast Metro Ethernet services are significantly faster than 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 business.comcast.com/enterprise.

About Comcast Cable 
Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) 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:

Nidhi Mathson
Davies Murphy Group
781.418.2460
[email protected]

Brian Farley
Comcast
678.385.5149
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SOURCE Comcast Corporation