Verizon’s Public Sector unit locked in another multi-million government contract, this time sealing a $78 million deal to help the Naval District Washington (NDW) update its voice platform.
Specifically, the operator said it will upgrade an existing Time Division Multiplexing voice system at NDW’s facility in Indian Head, Maryland to a hosted internet protocol voice service. It will also provide Verizon staff to NDW’s Regional Operations Center to help track and respond to catastrophic events as well as staff to help maintain NDW’s regional cybersecurity accreditation.
Additionally, Verizon said it will provide various kinds of other IT support as part of the deal, including application intrusion detection, network engineering and risk management framework validation.
Jennifer Chronis, SVP of Public Sector at Verizon, noted in a statement its latest award “builds on our recent wins with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Labor, and serves as another example of how Verizon is the market leader when it comes to public sector digital transformation.”
The contract was awarded through the General Service Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) technology procurement program. Launched in 2017, the 15-year EIS program is the vehicle through which all government telecom purchase agreements must be sourced by September 2022.
RELATED: Verizon tapped by Dept. of Labor for $887M network upgrade
In September, Verizon landed five EIS contracts from the Department of Labor collectively worth $887 million to, among other things, upgrade the agency’s IT backbone with a new network architecture. It also bagged a $78.8 million EIS task order from the Air National Guard in July. In June, it won a $495 million contract from the Department of Defense to roll out switches, routers, firewalls and edge computing capabilities, but this was not specified as an EIS award.
Verizon is competing head-to-head for EIS contracts with the likes of AT&T, Lumen and Comcast, among others. The most recent data available from the Government Accountability Office’s EIS transition progress tracking dashboard showed 91.7% of EIS solicitations had been put out to the industry but only 73.8% of EIS task orders had been awarded as of August 31, 2021. The government was originally aiming to have all its orders doled out by September 30, 2019.