AT&T announced on Monday that it has reeled in a 15-year, $984 million contract with the U.S. Department of Justice.
The deal serves as the long-term foundation for the Department of Justice's network and technology upgrades. The fully managed portfolio of solutions from AT&T includes IP voice, data, security, cloud access and professional services.
Contracts from the General Services Administration's Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program have become a lucrative source for service providers such as AT&T and CenturyLink. EIS gives federal agencies the flexibility and agility to migrate to modern communications and IT services that meet government security standards. Earlier this year, CenturyLink announced it was the first supplier to receive authority to operate under the EIS program.
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EIS is GSA's 15-year, $50 billion program that was designed to award various contracts to vendors that help federal agencies to buy and update their IT and telecommunications infrastructure services.
Under the new contract, AT&T will offer the DoJ network function virtualization (NFV), SD-WAN, managed IP voice services and cloud connectivity across the major cloud providers and other capabilities.
AT&T was the incumbent providing DoJ data services under the predecessor procurement program known as “Networx.” The incumbents that were providing voice services to the DoJ under the Networx program were Verizon and CenturyLink.
In the transition to EIS, AT&T will continue to provide data services and adds managed IP voice services. Work on the new contract is underway, according to a spokesman.
The new AT&T solutions will help simplify cloud adoption across 43 component organizations and support the DoJ's Joint Cloud Optimized Trusted Internet Connection Service (JCOTS), which will accelerate the path for DoJ to access multiple cloud environments.
The services and applications will be used across the Justice Department's more than 120,000 employees that are spread across more than 2,100 locations.
The deal also includes access to the AT&T mobility network and FirstNet, which is the nationwide, dedicated communications platform purpose-built for public safety and first responders. As of early May, AT&T FirstNet had more than 600,000 connections, according to a story by FierceWireless.
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During last week's second quarter earnings call, AT&T CFO John Stephens said AT&T sees the first responder market as about 3 million potential subscribers, but that market could grow to about 14 million when secondary first responders, like those that restore power, are added in.