Comcast Business today announced the completion of a $2 million fiber network expansion to serve Philadelphia’s Food Distribution Center. Located around Packer Avenue in South Philadelphia, adjacent to the Sports Complex, the Food Distribution Center is home to a concentration of food distributors and wholesalers.
Capable of delivering speeds of up to 1.2 Gigabit per second (Gbps) for small- and medium-sized businesses and up to 100 Gbps for larger enterprises, the network expansion will support 70+ businesses located in the commercial corridor by providing high-performance Ethernet and Internet needed to power the technology that enables critical restaurant business operations – from inventory tracking to advanced scheduling and more. Additionally, businesses will now have access to a comprehensive portfolio of Comcast Business products and services to help meet the day-to-day demands that require large amounts of bandwidth, linking multiple sites or locations or connecting offices to third-party data centers.
Since 2015, Comcast Business has committed a total of nearly $102 million in network expansions across the Greater Philadelphia and New Jersey area to benefit more than 24,000 of the region’s businesses.
Philabundance is among the local organizations benefiting from the investment. The nearly 40-year-old organization distributes millions of pounds of food a year to those in need, including to more than 135,000 hungry people in Philadelphia and New Jersey every week. The latest expansion supports Philabundance with the deployment of new fiber optic cable offering a reliable Internet connection for the first time to the organization and other unserved businesses in the Food Distribution Center.
“We are thrilled to partner with Comcast for Internet service. Comcast has been an incredible partner in helping us achieve our mission to drive hunger from our communities today as we work to end hunger for good,” said Loree D. Jones, Chief Executive Officer, Philabundance. “Having reliable Internet service is essential for us to provide the best support to our agency partners and the people they serve.”
“The latest investments and network expansions in Greater Philadelphia, and in particular the Food Distribution Center, are a testament to Comcast Business’s commitment to fostering economic development and transformation in our local communities,” said Michael Louden, regional vice president for Comcast Business’s Freedom Region. “Not only will access to our network in Philadelphia and New Jersey provide greater support to more businesses in the area, but it will help a local non-profit operate more efficiently and focus on providing children, families and seniors with access to food and meals.”