First Commonwealth Federal Credit Union

First Commonwealth is the largest credit union in the Lehigh Valley, with over $550 million in assets, nearly 50,000 members and six branches. They offer the same financial services found at a traditional bank, but with better rates and lower fees. That's because they’re structured differently. They are member-owned and not-for-profit. Instead of earning money for stockholders, they return profits to their member-owners (account holders) in the form of higher dividends on savings, lower rates on loans and lower fees.

When asked about why First Commonwealth has chosen PenTeleData to provide their data connections, Stephen P. Drosnock, Chief Technology Officer, explained, “PenTeleData is locally owned and operated. They have a reputation for reliability and great service. They were the only company who could provide a complete fiber network to all six of our locations across the Lehigh Valley. We replaced point to point T-1s with a fully meshed MPLS network. Their MPLS is our primary connection for our branch network. With this one implementation we more than doubled our bandwidth, built in redundancy, and added an Internet access point. PenTeleData’s services reduced latency between branches and provided us with the ability to operate our hot site for disaster recovery without any issues.”