I'm familiar with some enforced financial institution requirements, no where did I find transaction data of ATMs on a dedicated network to be _required_. Is this a common industry practice, or a mandatory standard I have not discovered?

It is a common practice. Since the alarm line is permanently connected to some monitoring company which is supposed to make up its mind about ATM still being there should a nice gentleman with a truck decide to take the entire machine with him, it is very difficult to get that line used for something else. The other line is the data line, which, in my experience, tends to be POTS or ISDN (and sometimes DS0). Maybe I am not being clear on the terminology - dedicated in this case means "non-alarm" line. Wherever the connection terminates is going to depend on implementation.

How does this relate to the No Name standalone ATM which normally have exposed POTS wires running to the wall?

If you look carefully at those wires (without flipping out mini-mart owners) you are most likely to notice that it has either two visible POTS lines or one cable carrying two phone lines. Alex