AT&T landed its latest contract from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency, this time scoring a $15 million task order to update the Army National Guard’s command and control network. Lance Spencer, Client EVP for Defense at AT&T Public Sector and FirstNet, told Fierce the deal represents new business for AT&T.
As part of the deal, AT&T will provide a combination of virtual private networking (VPN) and secure cloud connectivity services for the network, which is known as GuardNet. GuardNet supports more than 124,000 users across 11 time zones. For the Army National Guard specifically, it connects 2,312 different locations. The VPN services will be used to enable the National Guard’s remote training systems.
Spencer said the operator’s VPN service will provide enhanced security, performance and flexibility with end-to-end encryption and bandwidth support up to 100 Gbps. He noted that AT&T’s VPN also prevents traffic from touching the internet and protects against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Cloud connectivity will be delivered via its AT&T NetBond solutions to enable the National Guard to tap into the benefits of a multi-cloud environment.
“We saw this as an opportunity to bring our advanced networking capabilities to benefit the National Guard,” he stated. In terms of timeline for deployment, Spencer noted AT&T is “working closely with the Army National Guard to deliver our technology capabilities at a pace that's most beneficial to them in all 50 states and 4 territories. It’s important we ensure minimal system down-time while maintaining availability of this critical command and control network.”
The 11-year contract was awarded under the General Service Administration’s (GSA) Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) technology procurement program.
AT&T has already won a number of contracts from the Defense Information Systems Agency. In December, it scored a $161 million EIS task order to update and consolidate the Coast Guard’s data networks. Later the same month, it snagged a $304 million deal to provide session initiation protocol trunking and telephony services for the U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command regions.
The operator has also won a $725 million contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a $306 million deal with the Department of Homeland Security, and task orders from the Treasury Department and Department of Transportation.
All U.S. government agencies must transition their telecom purchase agreements to EIS contracts by May 31, 2023. Data released by the General Services Administration showed 11.5% of EIS task orders had yet to be awarded as of the end of February 2022.