MetTel has reeled in a contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that has a potential worth of $722 million over 15 years.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) picked MetTel as a provider for its National Local Exchange Carrier Services for the Next Generation (NLEC-NG) contract.
The VA Office of Information & Technology (OIT) works to provide telephone and data technologies to ensure staff has continuous telecommunications services.
One focus of the NLEC-NG contract is to centralize the administration of NLEC services at the enterprise level to ensure that OIT can reduce its telecommunications and data expenses with minimal impact on the services. OIT's goals include improvement in support, reporting, auditing, and invoicing.
As part of the contract with the VA, MetTel offers: T-1 Digital Switched Service (DSS), Centrex Line, Primary Rate ISDN (PRI), Session Initiation Protocol Trunk Service (SIP), Direct Inward Dialing (DID) / Direct Outbound Dialing (DOD), Metro Ethernet, and traditional wired phone service. It's also providing the VA with a single pane of glass for monitoring and reporting via its MetTel EIS Portal.
"We're proud to support the Department of Veterans Affairs and their traditional LEC services with our innovative delivery methodology," said Robert Dapkiewicz, senior vice president and general manager, MetTel Federal.
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MetTel announced in September that it had hired former AT&T executive Dapkiewicz to lead its federal program.
To date, MetTel has received 12 General Services Administration (GSA) Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contracts awards totaling over $1.3B with all options.
MetTel has authority to operate under the General Service Administration's $50 billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program. 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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AT&T, Lumen and Verizon, among others, have also won contracts under EIS. Last week, Lumen (formerly CenturyLink) announced it was awarded two contracts by the VA.