At a Telecom Crossroads (1996)

Six years ago, when $1.8 billion Trans Financial Bancorp was a small bank holding company with 11 branches located in and near Bowling Green, Ky., it was looking for a faster alternative to land-based copper phone lines for moving data to and from the operations center and between the branches. It settled upon a radio area network. This type of microwave network can handle data communications within a 30-mile radius. The RAN worked fine, and it still connects those 11 offices. But as the bank began buying banks 100 and 200 miles away, it needed a network with a wider geographic reach. The solution it found was a VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) network from AvData Systems, Inc., Atlanta. This is a network of small satellite dishes at 35 of Trans Financial's locations and a big satellite dish in Atlanta that actually sends the signals up to a GE satellite and receives signals back from it. (A few offices share a dish. The bank doesn't own the satellite itself because that would cost millions of dollars; it uses it.) Because the satellite maintains a geocentric orbit above the equator, the system could send data to and receive data from anywhere in the world. Benefits of satellite Satellite is not a common choice among banks--most use regular phone lines and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines to transmit information. You have to be a fairly unique case to qualify for the expense, says telecommunications consultant Tim Koxlien. If you've just got a straight data application scattered into rural areas where it could get expensive to run land lines, satellite would make sense. On the other hand, we have always been able to find a more cost-effective land-line solution, says Koxlien, president of The Koxlien Group, Hudson, Wisc. But Trans Financial has been happy with satellite. You're not subject to the vagaries of the phone company as to the rates and tariffs they charge, says Terry Goettsch, executive . vice-president. Also, you're not at their whim about fixing problems. While the bank might have to go through four or five local and long-distance phone companies to get a local area network line fixed, it only has to call one person at AvData for any problem in the entire VSAT network. The network has 99.9% reliability, and there's only a problem a few minutes a month. When there is a problem, it's usually caused by the T1 line that sends signals to the major dish in Atlanta. The only major communications lapse occurred when a hurricane approached Atlanta and brought all the city's phone lines down. The satellite system itself is unaffected by weather. Some people say satellites are susceptible to sun spots, but we haven't seen that, Goettsch says. Sun spot activity usually lasts for less than ten seconds, and Trans Financial's network is designed to withstand a ten-second outage. Part of AvData's service is to keep a 24-hour watch over Trans Financial's network, which includes all its 50 ATMs. So if an ATM is down, AvData will fix it or tell someone at the bank to fix it. Information moves quickly over the network--it typically takes one to two seconds for a teller at an IBM 4700 teller system to retrieve information from one of the bank's two AS/400s in its operations center. …