Texans Credit Union is a member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperative with branches throughout North Texas, Austin and Houston.

"We used a disciplined approach with very specific design criterion when we began the upgrade of our network to ensure we would end up with the best and most efficient network possible," said Kirk Hallum, Chief Technology Officer for Texans Credit Union. "We had prioritized the list of what we needed and conducted our search for a provider using this list. We needed flexibility with both Ethernet and TDM handoffs, the ability to scale our network to meet demand, Class of Service (CoS) to allow us to allocate bandwidth to support our different services, and diversity and resiliency to support our business continuity and disaster recovery objectives. tw telecom was able to deliver all of these and more, at a cost that resulted in a 30 percent savings in our telecom spend. The increase in capability, reduction in expense and greatly improved accuracy in our billing and reconciliation is a genuine benefit to our members."

"One of the things about tw telecom that impressed us was their willingness to be fully transparent with us," said Hallum. "We asked for, and were given, all the appropriate network diagrams because we wanted to know how our network would be configured when it was complete. tw telecom was so collaborative that we knew where the cable left our building and where it went, and what equipment serviced our network in their central offices. This kind of one-on-one cooperation was not available from any other vendor."

In addition to the 34-site IP VPN that serves Texans' headquarters, data centers and branch locations, the company built dual SONET-protected fiber entrances into its data centers, and purchased a 1Gbps point-to-point data transport circuit to support connectivity between data centers. Texans also deployed two 20 Mbps Internet circuits to serve as primary and back-up connections, and voice services to support all its main and branch locations.

"Texans Credit Union has nearly 140,000 members and it is our priority to improve the economic well-being of our members and improve the well-being of the communities we serve. So the decisions we make in our business are focused on enabling our members to reach their goals. We chose tw telecom to support us in this upgrade effort because they demonstrated the same concern for their customer as we have for ours," said Hallum.

"Texans is a perfect example of how a customer can significantly grow their network, improve capabilities, reduce downtime and shrink their communications expenses all at the same time," said William I. Sears, vice president and general manager for tw telecom in Dallas. "We realized how important this change was for Texans and its members and we made it a priority that they are successful. We approach our customers with the goal of giving them the technology and capabilities that will help their businesses grow and thrive."

tw telecom connects more commercial buildings to its fiber network than any other competitive communications provider, only exceeded by the large global incumbents. In fact, it has the third highest market share of retail Ethernet ports in service. With its own national footprint of metro fiber networks and one of the ten most interconnected IP backbones in the world, tw telecom has the national capability, robust product portfolio and national/local customer care teams to support mission critical enterprise applications and to deliver the industry's most sought after customer experience.