University of Washington Intercollegiate Athletics and Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) Washington announced a customized, hybrid high-speed video integration to upgrade the UW Athletics Village's video experience to create a better game day for fans and empower coaches, staff and players.
Comcast is upgrading video capabilities across the UW-ICA campus, including Husky Stadium, Alaska Airlines Arena, the Husky Ballpark and five other buildings. Further, Husky Stadium now offers a tailored video solution to fans during a game using a customized hybrid IPTV integration.
"Comcast has been a key partner in supporting the digital transformation of our video technologies. Video is a critical component of the Husky fans' game day experience, and Comcast has enhanced our video programming and in-game service delivery for our fans and stakeholders," said Erik Jones, chief information officer and associate athletic director, University of Washington ICA. "Comcast's technology has helped us to become more nimble and innovative in how we create, standardize, and distribute video content across our fiber network at Husky Stadium."
Prior to the Comcast solution, roughly 70% of UW-ICA's IT support on game day was dedicated to managing and troubleshooting video-related issues. The Comcast integration simplified technical video management and freed up IT resources for other game day tasks and projects.
"The Comcast X1 platform has streamlined our entire game day video programming operation. We have gone from a high-touch to a low-touch environment, satisfying even our most demanding customers," said Sean Rawlins, director of systems operations, University of Washington ICA.
"Any number of small technical issues can occur during a game. Thanks to Comcast, we are now able to have more time and resources to troubleshoot other technical issues across the stadium," said Elise Groves, IT director, University of Washington ICA. "This has also had a tremendous impact on our team, too. When we can automate key tasks, it makes everybody's job easier and less stressful."
Comcast also delivers this video solution to Alaska Airlines Arena on campus to support University of Washington Men's Basketball and Women's Basketball seasons.
Available in every coach's office, locker room, and student athlete lounge across the athletics village, Comcast also supplies the UW-ICA with hundreds of xFi X1 TV boxes, X1 and Xi5 Cable Boxes while providing the UW Athletics Village with enough video broadband resources to support an urban metropolis. This same X1 service, previously available to residential customers only, is now also available for all businesses across the State of Washington.
"Beyond the stadium and arena enhancements, Comcast streamlines how we distribute IPTV video to coaches and student athletes across other key ICA buildings. These individuals dedicate hours of extra work to their respective sports, and this integration helps improve how they use video to scout and analyze their competition and enriches the limited downtime they have during a busy week," Jones said. "Comcast has been deeply engaged and supportive throughout this transformational process and has provided the content expertise to provide a highly technical video solution to our day-to-day business problems."
"Comcast is proud to partner with one of the great academic institutions in our region and support their athletics department with premier video services," said Amy Lynch, regional senior vice president, Comcast Washington. "University of Washington Athletics' office of the CIO can now offer fans, coaches and players the best possible video experience, while simultaneously creating greater efficiencies for their entire campus."
In other Comcast news, Netrepid, a national provider of enterprise technology services for hosted, virtual, and data center powered solutions, has deployed Comcast Business Ethernet Network Services to connect dozens of distributed locations across a Continental Area Network (CAN) as if they are on the same Local Area Network (LAN). The company anticipates adding another 10 to 20 locations this year.
"Comcast Business enables us to connect our clients in California, Maine and everywhere in between to our central network hub in Harrisburg," said Sam Coyl, president of Netrepid. "The reliability of the Comcast network and the way we can use Ethernet services to create extensions of our data center give us an edge to reinforce our position as a market and industry leader."
Netrepid also utilizes a variety of 10GB Ethernet Dedicated Internet and an Ethernet Private Line from Comcast to securely connect and back up its secondary data center in Troy, MI.
"Comcast Business' network services are ideal for companies like Netrepid that need to connect multiple locations with high data traffic demands," said Toni Murphy, vice president of Comcast Business in the Keystone Region. "Our robust infrastructure saves clients the resources of building their own, while giving them peace of mind by providing high levels of availability across all locations."
