Score another government win for CenturyLink. Coming on the heels of last week's $1.6 billion contract with the U.S. Department of Interior, the telco announced it has won a task order to provide secure connectivity to the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity's learning network.
Like the Department of Interior (DoI) contract, the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) contract, or task order, was awarded via the General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program. The task order marked the first EIS award made by the DoD.
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CenturyLink was picked to provide virtual private networking (VPN), internet, voice and video services to more than 85 DoDEA locations around the world. The contract has an initial base period of one year, with 12 additional option periods.
As one of only two federally-operated school systems, DoDEA is responsible for planning, directing, coordinating and managing pre-kindergarten through 12th grade educational programs on behalf of the Department of Defense. DoDEA operates163 accredited schools in eight districts located in 11 foreign countries, seven states, Guam and Puerto Rico.
DoDEA has approximately 15,000 employees who serve more than 70,000 children of active duty military and DoD civilian families.
“DoDEA put its trust in CenturyLink to provide its staff and tens of thousands of school-aged children of military families with a reliable, robust and secure network that will support desktop computers, printers, mobile devices and video collaboration services in a 21st century learning environment that spans the globe,” said David Young, CenturyLink senior vice president, public sector, in a statement. “We’re focused on modernizing and updating DoD’s learning network so DoDEA can concentrate on its mission to educate, engage and empower military-connected students to succeed in a dynamic world.”
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In addition to the DoI and DOD contracts, last year CenturyLink was awarded a contract to provide connectivity to NASA. As part of the NASA contract, CenturyLink is providing core backbone network services with speeds of up to 100 Gbps.
CenturyLink was the first supplier last year to garner the authority to operate under the GSA's 15-year, $50 billion EIS program. EIS was designed to award various contracts to vendors that help federal agencies to buy and update their IT and telecommunications infrastructure services. It's an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) program that serves as the follow-on to GSA's Networks, WITS3 and regional telecommunications services contracts.