With an assist from Comcast Business Services, the Boston Celtics have upgraded their data and voice services between their administrative and practice facilities.
The Celtics are using Comcast’s Ethernet service to download and transfer bandwidth-intensive video files and images between the organization’s administrative office in Boston and its practice facility in Waltham, Mass.
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.
While the Celtics team plays their 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.
Prior to Comcast Business Services, the Celtics organization had separate phone systems at each site and used a T3 line from another provider. The separate voice systems made inter-office calls difficult, and the systems lacked features such as Caller ID, four-digit dialing and conference calling.
Team employees also 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 for the Boston Celtics. “With up to 100 megabits 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. 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 downloads.
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 and images to the Celtics’ website.
“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.”
Buoyed by its Ethernet offerings, which launched last year, Comcast reported in its most recent third quarter that business services revenues increased by 34 percent over the same quarter a year ago.
