Comcast Business Services has put the finishing touches on a fiber-optical backbone in the downtown area of San Mateo, Calif., which gave local businesses a significant boost on their data speeds.
While San Mateo has been able to attract a number of high-tech start-up companies, the city’s broadband network was limited.
Now that the project has been completed, download speeds of up to 100 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 10 Mbps are now available to medical offices, high-tech start-ups and other businesses in the downtown area. Through Comcast’s Business Class Ethernet services, bandwidth up to 10 Gbps will be available for businesses with the largest data needs.
The project, which is known locally as “Digital Downtown,” was the brainchild of The Edge, an initiative of San Mateo’s Chamber that is committed to identifying and overcoming obstacles to economic growth in the city. After listening to the concerns of San Mateo’s business community and collaborating with the city, Edge leaders approached several broadband providers late in 2010 to investigate how higher-speed broadband could be brought to downtown. Comcast was the only provider to engage the group and offer to make a major capital investment to achieve The Edge’s goal.
The completion of the public/private economic development initiative was officially announced last night at a restaurant in downtown San Mateo.
“Comcast is ecstatic to bring our best-in-class products and services to this exciting and rapidly growing part of the city of San Mateo,” said Mark O’Leary, vice president of Comcast’s Business Services division in Northern California. “The San Mateo Chamber, The Edge and the city of San Mateo were terrific partners in this complex endeavor, and its successful completion is a victory for every party involved – especially local businesses.”