Comcast Is Bridging The Digital Divide

In the latest effort to bridge digital divides and increase access to its suite of home and business products and services, Comcast recently announced plans to invest $4.5 million to bring the Xfinity 10G Network to Planada, a rural community in Merced County, California. The Central Valley has been especially hard hit by storms this past year, and efforts to rebuild and expand digital infrastructure are coming at an opportune time.

Comcast has been a corporate neighbor for years, so while this project is new, their presence here is not. “After unprecedented, severe weather, Merced County has felt the impact of the recent storm damage,” said Robert Hypes, Interim CEO, United Way of Merced County. “When the City of Merced issued an evacuation order for areas with flooding risk from Bear Creek, Comcast joined forces with us and delivered food, beverages, and personal hygiene kits to over 300 people at the Merced County Fairground evacuation center.”

Comcast was on hand for those challenging times and now is looking to be a part of ensuring Planada’s future. In addition to the 10G expansion dollars, Comcast also donated $75,000 to United Way of Merced and $25,000 to the San Joaquin Regional Broadband Consortium. California Business Journal recently spoke with Elad Nafshi, who serves as Executive VP, Chief Network Officer for Comcast Cable as he unveiled plans for Planada at a groundbreaking on April 17. When asked how the Planada expansion represented Comcast’s larger commitments
to digital equity, Nafshi said, “Comcast is firmly committed to eliminating the digital divide through initiatives like the network expansion here, along with Project UP and our Lift Zones.”

The expansion in Planada comes a year after a similar project was unveiled in Biola, in Fresno County. “I’m proud of our work here and in other rural areas of California, where we’ve been offering services like Internet Essentials which has already connected thousands of customers with internet service at a very low cost,” says Nafshi. Nafshi joined Comcast in 2005 and has held several network, product development and management roles since that time. He has led a number of high-profile initiatives around Next Generation Access Network, Cloud TV, Cloud DVR Interactive Television, and other key programs.

At the event in Planada, Nafshi was able to provide 100 graduating 8th graders from Planada’s Cesar Chavez Middle School with free laptops and school supply kits. “That was obviously a real highlight. What a great bunch of kids! It’s been a very emotional day for me, being able to make a difference in this very tangible way.”

Building high-speed internet infrastructure is one thing, but how does Comcast plan to provide customer service in less densely populated areas once these upgrades are complete? “We have a lot of experience in serving high density and low density population centers,” says Nafshi. “One of the things I’m very proud of is how Comcast is able to provide service to all of these areas as our coverage expands.”

When asked for specifics on customer experience management, Nafshi shares a story from a few years back. “Just to put things in perspective, during the first two weeks of the COVID pandemic in 2020, we saw three years’ worth of capacity increase.” How does a network adapt to that kind of precipitous volume increase? The company had been planning for expansion and had, over the past several years, been building the Comcast Octave platform to optimize internet delivery no matter where you live in the Comcast network. “Since
we had Octave in place, we were able to increase our capacity by 45% when we needed it the most,” Nafshi says.

When considering less densely populated areas, Nafshi points out that serving rural areas is nothing new for Comcast. “The great thing about this is we don’t have to tear up sidewalks or front lawns or have you wait 8 hours for a technician,” Nafshi says. Why is that? Because the fiber optics connection in most cases is already there.

“We’re building greater capacity on the back end through leading-edge virtualization technology,” Nafshi says. “This new generation of artificial intelligence makes it so we can automatically manage potential problems and auto correct before the customer ever has a problem.” Nafshi enthusiastically describes how the AI infrastructure makes millions of decisions every day to optimize delivery of service to each customer through data hubs in Philadelphia and Denver.

The main questions people have about internet service providers are 1. How fast? And 2. How reliable? With reliability well in hand through Octave and other optimization tools, the big news in Planada remains 10G. The technology that powers the Comcast 10G network is what Nafshi describes as “truly the leading edge. Our innovation partnership with Intel brought together the technology that enables us to deliver next generation reliable internet service with low latency across our growing footprint.”

During his time in Planada, Nafshi visited a local bakery, “I try to stay low-carb, but was happy to make an exception here. That pastry was delicious!” At the bakery, the owner described how transactions using a non Comcast network often take long or don’t go through due to spotty coverage. “This new infrastructure will make a big impact on businesses like this as well as household customers,” Nafshi says.

When Comcast’s network expansion is completed, Planada residential customers will have access to Xfinity Internet and Mobile services, including Internet Essentials or Internet Essentials Plus for qualified families/individuals. This means low-cost internet accessibility at home. Households can also see if they qualify for the Federal Government’s Affordable
Connectivity Program, which offers a $30 per month subsidy ($75 per month in tribal areas). With Affordable Connectivity, the service is made essentially free for lower income customers.

For the future in California and across the country, Comcast plans to keep expanding access in rural communities. “We’ve already announced over $700 million in public/private funding to underserved rural communities,” Nafshi says. “And we’re just getting started.”

Related Posts