The General Services Administration Thursday announced Bell Atlantic as the winner of a contract to provide local telephone and data services to federal agencies in the Washington area, a deal that could be worth $1 billion over eight years.
The contract, known as WITS2001, for Washington Interagency Telecommunications System, will reduce agencies' telecommunications costs, which are already the lowest rates in the Washington area.
Bell Atlantic holds the current contract for local service, which it won in 1989. Under the new contract, it will continue to offer voice and circuit-switched data services and is expanding its offerings to include more transmission services, switched multi-megabit data service, frame relay and asynchronous transfer mode data services, voice and video teleconferencing, Internet access and telecommunications equipment.
The contract does not guarantee Bell Atlantic all Washington area business, however. After a one-year forebearance period, GSA can accept offers for services from contractors on other GSA telecommunications contracts, including the long-distance carriers on the FTS2001 contracts, which were awarded last year.
"We will not settle for complacency in ourselves or our contractors, but will continue to seek the advantages of continuous competition for our customers," said Dennis Fischer, head of GSA's Federal Technology Service.
Bell Atlantic beat out New York City-based Winstar Communications for the WITS2001 contract.
NEXT STORY: Software is the new tool for catching crooks