Charter's Spectrum Enterprise expands presence in federal arena

Spectrum Enterprise is teaming up with Core Technologies Inc. (CTI) to resell services and solutions to government agencies.

Norcross, Georgia-based CTI, which is a woman and minority-owned business, is one of nine primary contractors for the General Service Administration's $50 billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program. Thanks to its partnership with CTI, Charter Communications' Spectrum Enterprise is now an authorized subcontractor under CTI's EIS contract.

“With dedicated resources to aggressively scale this business, our investment in the federal government market is built upon the strong foundation of the existing Spectrum Enterprise Government practice,” said Spectrum Enterprise's Greg King, senior vice president for product, marketing, and strategy, in a statement. “By partnering with Spectrum Enterprise, CTI can offer federal government agencies the reach and reliability of our wholly-owned fiber network, robust technology solutions portfolio and differentiated client experience.”

The EIS program is replacing the federal government's current contracts for purchasing network services, which were originally set to expire in March 2020. Now those contracts, which the government says are worth about $2.2 billion a year, have been extended to May 2023.

The federal government is in the process of moving its telecommunication contracts to EIS. By March 31 of next year, 50% of agencies' telecom inventory must come from EIS contracts, and by September 2022 100% of their inventory must be from those contracts.

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Lumen (formerly CenturyLink), AT&T and Verizon, among others, have also won large contracts under EIS.

In addition to EIS, Spectrum and CTI also entered into an agreement to take part in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Mentor-Protégé Program. Spectrum Enterprise will kick in business development and marketing assistance.

Spectrum also made an equity investment in CTI to provide it with scale-up capital that will allow the company to more effectively bid for and service federal EIS contracts. Since it was founded in 1998, CTI has become a full-service telecommunications solutions and information technology integrator, with core competencies across carrier services, audio/visual communications, wire and cable infrastructure, security and other telecommunications services.

“With our established partnership with Spectrum Enterprise and the strength of our combined teams, services and solutions portfolios, Core Technologies is even more competitively positioned to help government agencies modernize their IT infrastructure and improve service to the public,” said CTI President Debbie Binette, in a statement.