Comcast Corporation, one of the nation’s leading providers of information and communications products and services, today announced an agreement with Chase Collegiate School to deliver high-speed Internet access to nearly 500 students and faculty throughout New Haven and Litchfield County. With this announcement, teachers and students in grades Pre-K through 12 will take advantage of Comcast Business Class Ethernet services to support new technologies that extend and expand classroom learning, such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), video conferencing, distance learning, Web 2.0 educational applications, and cloud computing.
Located on a 47-acre campus, Chase Collegiate School comprises nearly 500 students, many of whom come to class with their own mobile devices, such as laptops, smartphones and tablets. Rather than prohibiting students’ on-campus use of their own mobile devices, Chase Collegiate School has instead embraced them as part of a 21st century learning environment and allows the devices on its network.
“We firmly believe that our role as educators extends far beyond standing in front of a classroom and reading from a book. Mobile devices are a gateway to a wealth of rich, interactive knowledge – and when used properly, these new technologies can help enhance the overall educational experience of our students,” said W. Scott Temple, director of technology for Chase Collegiate School. “As a direct result of our decision to support these devices, however, we knew that we would also need to dramatically increase our network bandwidth, and we wanted a provider that would give us the ability to scale up quickly whenever needed as our cloud computing demands continue to grow.”
To address Chase Collegiate School’s need for more bandwidth, Comcast installed a reliable, high-capacity Ethernet Dedicated Internet connection to the school’s campus. With this service, all students and faculty are able to access the Internet from any computer, laptop, smartphone, tablet or other mobile device with ease. The additional bandwidth Chase Collegiate has gained has also improved the school’s specialty labs for music, arts, and language courses, which frequently involve the use of streaming video and conferencing capabilities. In addition, teachers can continue to publish blog posts and organize online chat rooms, while students and their parents can access an online portal to obtain detailed information about upcoming school events, tests, grades, and homework assignments via the cloud.
“Having reliable, high-performance access to the Internet is absolutely critical for both our staff and our students. With previous providers, we were juggled back and forth between customer support centers, each of them telling us that a different carrier was responsible, and hours later, we were still without connectivity,” continued Temple. “When we learned that Comcast owned and managed its network down to the equipment on our campus, with one service number to call – and that we could get significantly more bandwidth for less money – we were sold.”
In fact, Chase Collegiate School was so pleased with its initial Comcast deployment that it is planning to add a voice service within the next few months. With Comcast’s Business Class Trunks, customers can connect their existing Private Branch Exchange (PBX) equipment to Comcast’s advanced IP network, which provides them with a flexible and intelligent way to maximize their use of next-generation technologies.
“Schools that utilize bandwidth-intensive technologies like cloud computing and videoconferencing are increasingly finding that adding Ethernet services to their organizations can actually help them improve efficiency, enhance network reliability, and reduce costs,” said Charlie Tzoumas, vice president of Comcast Business Services for the Western New England Region, which includes Connecticut. “Chase Collegiate is a perfect example of an educational institution that realized the importance of partnering with a reliable communications provider to help lay the foundation for its connection to the cloud, and we are looking forward to continuing to serve its students, parents and teachers well into the future.”
About Chase Collegiate School
Originally founded in 1865, today’s Chase Collegiate School is a combination of what was once the St. Margaret’s School for Girls and the McTernan School for Boys. Located on a 47-acre campus in Waterbury, Connecticut, Chase Collegiate School comprises nearly 500 students in grades Pre-K through 12, offering small class sizes and a highly educated faculty. For more information, please visit http://www.chasecollegiate.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 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.