The biggest locally based bank in "Gig City" has selected Comcast Business Ethernet to provide high-speed connections among seven of its branches where Comcast's 10-gigabits-per-second service is available.
The Chattanooga-based First Volunteer Bank, a $950 million-asset bank with 24 offices across East Tennessee and Northwest Georgia, is using Comcast's upgraded network to speed the transfer of electronic records, customer data, loan information, online applications and real-time file transfers among the bank's offices and disaster recovery facility. Comcast expanded its 10G Business Ethernet to Chattanooga last year as part of a multi-million-dollar upgrade of its cable network in the region.
"Upgrading to an advanced network will enable us to use innovative technologies that help improve the quality of our operations and communications, while bringing additional convenience to customers and staff," First Volunteer CEO Patti Steele said.
The Comcast network will connect about one fourth of all of First Volunteer's 24 branch offices, which are spread across 11 counties in Tennessee and Georgia.
"We're thrilled to provide First Volunteer Bank with the performance and scalability of our 10-gigabit fiber network," said Michelle Pluskota, Comcast's vice president of business services. "This infrastructure enhancement increases bandwidth, enables access to more applications, and allows First Volunteer Bank to easily manage and expand operations over time."
Nationally, Comcast Business's Ethernet services are delivered over an advanced network that spans 140,000 miles and features a 100 Gbps backbone and expanded local footprint through Ethernet over its Hybrid Fiber-Coax network.
Scott Harrison, senior vice president and IT manager at First Volunteer, said Comcast was able to give the bank better network connections than any other provider "so we switched all of the available network inputs where Comcast had this new upgraded Ethernet service available and it's been great."
"We were able to increase the speed at our disaster recovery center by between 30 and 50 times faster, so we got virtually instant ability to replicate and recover data with very little down time," Harrison said.
Chattanooga's municipal electric utility, EPB, coined the "Gig City" name for Chattanooga after it built its fiber optic network to all homes and businesses in 2010 and soon after began offering the option of 10 Gigabit-per-second service to all of its customers - the first city in the Western Hemisphere to do so.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340.