AT&T wins $275M Department of State task order

AT&T Government Solutions (NYSE: T) added another win to its public sector column when the U.S. Department of State awarded it a Foreign Post Telephone Replacement Program task order that could be worth up to $275 million over the next five years.

The contract, which was awarded under the GSA Connections II IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) contract, calls for AT&T to provide advanced and secure IP telephony systems to U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide.

Under the terms of the agreement, AT&T will design and procure IP telephony systems for new installations and upgrades for the pool of nearly 300 U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, and then dispatch personnel who will install, integrate, test and bring online these systems. 

Winning this contract gives AT&T another proof point in its growing arsenal of government agency contracts. Besides this recent win with the Department of State, it has won other contracts for IP-based services with HUD and the U.S. Postal Service.

"This contract represents a very large global program for AT&T and represents a significant program in supporting the State Department," said Stacy Schwartz, vice president, AT&T Government Solutions, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "I believe in terms of importance it's really changing the technology foundation for the State Department overseas."

The network infrastructure that will be installed will enable the agency to eventually Unified Communications and other IP-based services.   

While AT&T could also provide its traditional network services, Schwartz said "initially it's just the deployment services and our knowledge of creating the right architecture to support their telephony."

At this point, the initial focus is on pre and long-term planning to get a hold of the specific requirements of each site.

"There's different types of locations based on size, based on region, and scope so that's how we're approaching the planning stages with the State Department."

While AT&T won't announce its second-quarter earnings until Wednesday, the service provider reported that first-quarter business services revenues, which include the public sector, declined 2.7 percent to $8.7 billion due to expected customer migrations off of legacy products such as ATM and Frame Relay. These declines were partially offset by continued double-digit growth in strategic business services. Next-gen IP services such as VPN, Ethernet, cloud, hosting and other advanced IP services grew 16.1 percent year-over-year. 

For more:
- see the release

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Updated article on July 24 with quotes from Stacy Schwartz, vice president, AT&T Government Solutions.