County Bank Extends its MPLS Network to Student-Run Branch at Area High School

A student-run County Bank branch at a high school in Fresno, Calif., is among the almost 45 community bank sites that will be connected to a new MPLS network powered by New Edge Networks, a unit of EarthLink Inc. (NASDAQ:ELNK). County Bank, the principal subsidiary of Capital Corp. of the West (NASDAQ:CCOW), is strategically using new network technology and innovative community outreach for maintaining its leadership position in Central and Northern California. By extending its MPLS network to the student-run branch office at McLane High School, County Bank is reinforcing its community commitment and fostering financial literacy among students and their families. First in California, the fully functioning, student-run County Bank branch opened for business this school year for students, parents, and faculty. Incoming senior students were selected before the start of the school year to run all branch operations with direction from a County Bank supervisor. "MPLS (short for Multi Protocol Label Switching) technology provides high flexibility, reliability, availability, and substantial savings on monthly communications fees,” said Greg Griffiths, vice president of marketing for New Edge Networks, a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based EarthLink Inc. County Bank is upgrading its wide area network from one based on frame relay technology to new MPLS. It awarded New Edge a three-year contract. "For us, upgrading from frame relay to MPLS was a no-brainer decision,” said Anthony F. Salas, senior vice president and chief technology officer for County Bank based in Merced, Calif. "New Edge proposed a fairly seamless migration to MPLS by using existing lines, existing routers, and existing interfaces versus ripping everything out and starting all over again,” Salas said. "We have been very happy with New Edge; the support has been very good, very reliable.” County Bank recently announced the acquisition of 11 branches from National Bank of Arizona’s California Stockman’s Bank and almost doubled its transmission speeds for about the same monthly cost of the legacy frame relay network. MPLS provides guaranteed bandwidth availability and a class-of-service feature for prioritizing voice and data traffic over the network, optimizing bandwidth utilization. "New Edge designs MPLS network solutions that provide the same levels of features and capabilities previously affordable only by the largest enterprises,” Griffiths said. "The support model we use helps ensure we can provide the highest level of attention that our customers need to operate efficiently and profitably.” County Bank is using its network for all banking transactions and enabling any branch office or service center to communicate with any other branch. This eliminates the need to funnel all bank data traffic through a single location, eliminating a single point of failure. County Bank also is initiating VoIP telephony to cut long-distance calling charges and improve efficiency. "With the proliferation of applications that are running over our network, class of service is certainly one feature we are going to take advantage of,” Salas said. County Bank’s MPLS network is expected to be fully operational by the end of the November. About County Bank County Bank, the primary subsidiary of Capital Corp of the West (NASDAQ:CCOW), is Northern California’s leading community bank. County Bank currently has 30 branches with an additional 11 branches being added later this year and three service centers. According to the latest FDIC data, County Bank has a 7.5% market share in the six Central California counties in which it has significant retail branches. This ranks County Bank fifth among thirty-seven financial institutions in this market area. For more information about County Bank, visit www.countybank.com. About New Edge Networks New Edge Networks builds and manages private IP-based wide area networks that do not use the public Internet. Connecting business sites at virtually any address in the United States, New Edge allows businesses to choose any blend of available access technologies–from DSL and T1 lines to fiberoptic connections–for building private and secure MPLS networks with performance guarantees. A wholly owned subsidiary of EarthLink Inc. (NASDAQ:ELNK), New Edge is based in Vancouver, Wash. For more information visit www.newedgenetworks.com or call 1-360-693-9009.