The Next Generation of Banking Network Services

Enterprise Network Services provides banks with the next generation of bank-to-bank data connectivity facilities through its US-BankNet and BranchNet Enterprise Network solutions. These high-speed telecommunications infrastructure networks provide both redundancy and expansion of computer LAN and WAN technology while allowing banks to own their own networks versus the traditional long-term lease from telecom providers. They also provide for fast delivery of data, text, voice and video information, as well as services across the entire enterprise or geographical area. ERF Wireless networks are presently being used by banks in the central and southern United States.

Since demands are on the rise for retail banking products, redundancy, disaster recovery, item imaging, image clearing, fast Internet access and bank security, banks will have no choice but to continue expanding their network infrastructure.

Banking institutions have traditionally leased telecommunications circuits versus owning their own infrastructure. Finally, there’s another option. With regulatory acceptance of the ERF Wireless CryptoVue® Network Security Appliance and cost savings from owning your own network, the timing is right for banks to make the move to an ERF Wireless network.

Objectives

• Allow financial institutions to go "all digital"
• Eliminate bank-to-bank bandwidth limitations in application deployment strategies
• Extend retail banking operations applications and information to remote branch offices
  
• Enable effective Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategies
  
• Increase productivity by providing high application performance and secure access to corporate resources
  
• Enable easy deployment and centralized management and control of complex, diverse enterprise applications across geographically dispersed branches and banking centers
  
• Ensure application availability and peak performance with advanced optimization and load balancing, combining traffic managers and remote access systems
  
• Meet anticipated requirements well into the 21st Century
  
• Dramatically reduce the infrastructure costs over time
  
• Create an additional revenue stream for the bank
  
• Provide unique opportunities for banks to increase customer offerings

Major Features

BranchNet
The Enterprise Network Services subsidiary of ERF Wireless provides turnkey design and implementation of secure wireless broadband networks for enterprise-class applications. In particular, Enterprise Network Services has focused its attention primarily on the regional banking industry.

Our unique application of wireless broadband technology provides regional banks an extremely cost-effective way to replace all of their recurring T1 and other telephone company costs with a one-time capital investment that can typically be recovered in less than three years. The resulting encrypted wireless broadband network connects all of a bank’s branches to a central bank and can provide up to 30Mbps of continuous bandwidth as compared to the typical 1.4Mbps of a T1 connection from the telephone company.

The Enterprise Network Services wireless network design is strictly for WAN point-to-point connectivity and is not intended for “within the building” wireless applications. Once in place, this enterprise-class wireless network not only replaces all of the data connectivity requirements between locations, but also has the excess capacity to provide VoIP telephone service, video surveillance, document imaging and Internet connectivity for all of the enterprise locations.

US-BankNet
In addition to the local connectivity between bank branches provided by BranchNet, the typical regional bank also has a significant amount of additional cost associated with their longer distance connectivity requirements. These additional costs are associated with providing connections between the bank’s operations center and their core processors for check clearing and other outside services. They also have connectivity requirements to obtain Internet bandwidth as well as requirements to connect to the Federal Reserve. Typically, the Enterprise Network Services Division satisfies all of these requirements by constructing a longer distance wireless network known as US-BankNet to provide these services. The US-BankNet is owned and operated by the Enterprise Network Services Division and is financed through the fees that the banks pay to utilize its services.

WiNet
Enterprise Network Services also typically enters into an agreement with financial institutions on behalf of ERF Wireless to resell all of their excess bandwidth capacity to commercial and retail customers within their coverage area under a revenue-sharing agreement, thus further reducing the overall cost to the financial institution. Any such revenue-sharing agreement is administered by the Wireless Bundled Services Division of ERF Wireless.

CryptoVue®
In order to satisfy the security concerns of banking regulators, Enterprise Network Services has developed the ERF Wireless CryptoVue® Network Security Appliance. This unique and proprietary encryption device consists of hardware, software, an integrated security protocol and 24/7 monitoring that gives it a distinct advantage in the marketplace. ERF Wireless does not know of any comparable type of monitored security device being utilized in enterprise-class financial networks.

Monitoring & Maintenance
As part of the integrated security protocol, financial institutions also enter into a long-term 24/7 network monitoring and maintenance contracts with Enterprise Network Services on behalf of the Network Operations Division of ERF Wireless. This contract is a major part of the overall CryptoVue security protocol and is offered to satisfy the concerns of banking regulators.

Wireless Products
The wireless broadband radio equipment deployed by Enterprise Network Services is a special commercially-hardened version of the Motorola Canopy Wireless Platform configured to form point-to-point and point-to-multipoint network connections for financial institutions that can be used in wireless backhaul, bridging and other data applications.
The point-to-point configuration can span distances of up to 35 miles. Distances of greater than 35 miles can be covered by daisy chaining the units across multiple relay towers. The point-to-point systems generally operate at 5.7 GHz and a raw data rate of 10 Mbps, 20 Mbps or 45 Mbps with measurable data throughput rates of 7+ Mbps, 14+ Mbps and 31+ Mbps respectively. Motorola also offers a 5.2 GHz point-to-point and point-to-multipoint system that ERF Wireless deploys on short-haul segments up to a distance of 10 miles.

Enterprise Network Services uses Motorola-authorized and FCC-certified custom-manufactured mounting hardware, tower struts, dishes, radomes and cabling to greatly extend the useful life and reliability of the system. While there may be many lower-cost transmission hardware solutions available, Enterprise Network Services adheres to the philosophy that only enterprise-class hardware should be utilized in enterprise-class networks.

Market Depth
The market reach for Enterprise Network Services’ products and services for regional banks extends nationwide and consists primarily of financial institutions with at least 10 branches and assets between $200 million and $9 billion. Our statistical analysis indicates approximately 1,800 financial institutions fit these parameters.

With the advent of Check 21 imaging, VoIP and other bandwidth-intensive applications, financial institutions are finding that traditional point-to-point T1 circuits are no longer sufficient to meet their data communications needs. Upgrading their data circuits to dual T1s (3Mb) in some locations can cost as much as $2,300 per branch per month, plus the cost of upgraded communications equipment and routers. The construction of a typical ERF Wireless enterprise-class wireless broadband network can range from a few hundred thousand dollars to millions of dollars, depending on the number of branch locations involved as well as the geographic locations of the branches. Thus, this particular enterprise-class wireless broadband application offers revenue growth opportunities that are only limited by the number of simultaneous banking network contracts that Enterprise Network Services can administer at one time.

Enterprise Network Services is utilizing a project management approach to administering these contracts and is heavily outsourcing many of the construction functions in order to maximize the potential for rapid revenue growth. Over the past two years, Enterprise Network Services has successfully implemented five such wireless broadband regional banking networks in three states and has three others under construction.

The same general technology and implementation approach can be applied by Enterprise Network Services to other enterprise-class wireless broadband customers in a manner similar to the application used for the regional banking industry. Enterprise Network Services anticipates exploring such other applications in the near future.