Just because you’re not a Fortune 500 company doesn’t necessarily mean your business communications should be lacking. That’s why one financial institution that started as a mere one-location startup and has blossomed into several branches has turned to business Ethernet leader tw telecom (News - Alert) for multi-site connectivity.

Kentucky-based American Founders Bank will now benefit from advanced voice and data services from tw telecom at its seven Kentucky locations. Under the multi-year contract, tw telecom will deliver services including business Ethernet, IP VPN, Ethernet Internet, and digital voice/VoIP to more efficiently, securely and cost-effectively connect the bank’s remote branches and headquarter locations.

"We are confident that tw telecom will be a great fit for us and are very pleased to partner with a provider that offers such a great combination of reliability, scalability and customer service," said Tommy Burgett, senior vice president and CTO of American Founders Bank, in a prepared statement. "tw telecom is giving us a significant bandwidth increase by utilizing fiber optic connectivity, which will improve our disaster recovery capabilities and decrease the overall cost of our services."

With the third highest market share of retail business Ethernet ports in service, tw telecom has successfully connected more commercial buildings to its fiber network than any other communications provider in the space. Thanks to its robust metro fiber networks, and ownership of one of the 10 most interconnected IP backbones globally, tw telecom is capable of supporting mission-critical enterprise applications and delivering high-quality customer experiences and improved business productivity.

"In just a few short years, American Founders Bank has grown from a single-location startup to a multi-branch entity with offices throughout central Kentucky," said Joe Paulin, vice president and general manager for tw telecom's Louisville market. "We're pleased that our services will help American Founders deliver an even better experience to its customers."

Most recently, tw telecom’s fiber network architecture was chosen by East Coast-based Latisys – a leading national vendor of IT outsourcing solutions – to deliver high-bandwidth, high-density connectivity to Washington, D.C.- area enterprise users at one of its data center campuses.

The addition of tw telecom’s national fiber infrastructure to the Latisys-Ashburn data center site will include more than 27,000 route miles of fiber, three-quarters of which is within 75 metro U.S. markets; highly scalable bandwidth and an array of network services, including data, Internet and VoIP; and capabilities including 2010MEF 9 and 13 certification, 10 Gigabit, fractional 10 Gigabit and long-haul fiber.

Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Carrie Schmelkin