DOD lets $600M pact to ISDN D.C. network

Electronic News, Nov 18, 1991

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon last week awarded a 10-year, potential $600 million contract to Bell Atlantic Network Services to modernize the Defense Department's antiquated telephone network in the Washington, D.C. area.

Under the oft-protested and long-delayed Telecommunications Modernization Project (TEMPO), Bell Atlantic's Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Companies will replace the National Capitol area's existing analog Consolidated Centrex system with and end-to-end digital network. DOD projects that the TEMPO contract will serve more than 160,000 lines in the Washington metropolitan area by the end of the 10-year pact.

AT&T will provide much of the equipment under the contact, including 25 5ESS central office switches which will provide the DOD with Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) technology. AT&T will also supply DOD with the Merlin Communications System, its small business telephone system; the Definity Generic 1, a mid-size PBX, and a rang or AT&T Paradyne modems. As prime contractor, Bell Atlantic will provide design, engineering, implementation, and management services. Both companies will provide installation and maintenance services.

Under the TEMPO contract, Bell Atlantic will be responsible for the construction of a System Management Center at the Pentagon which will provide service order processing, maintenance, billing, terminal equipment ordering, network facilities inventory, and other functions. AT&T said it would provide the Virtual Circuit Switch, a data networking product, for use in the System Management Center to help Bell Atlantic personnel monitor the entire TEMPO network.

The TEMPO contract also includes options for voice mail, electronic mail, audio teleconferencing and local area networks (LANs). Bell Atlantic last week said SMS Data Products Group, Inc., Reston, Va., will act as sub-contractor on the TEMPO project for LAN integration services.

Award of the TEMPO pact to Bell Atlantic ends a series of protests and delays that have dogged the procurement since release of the original request for proposals in May 1988.

Institutional Communications Corp., a McLean, Va.-based telecommunications provider, has long held that the TEMPO solicitation restricted competition, that it unfairly favored incumbent supplier C&P Telephone, and that the massive buy should be broken down into several different procurements. Protests lodged by ICC with the U.S. General Accounting Office, however, were largely unsuccessful. Similarly, an investigation by the DOD Inspector General's office found some problems with the way the contract was structured, but a second DOD inquiry gave its approval to the procurement and recommended that it be allowed to proceed. Award of the contract was delayed even further about a year ago, when the General Services Administration stepped in, identifying TEMPO as a "high profile, high dollar" procurement, therefore making it subject to comprehensive agency review (EN, Nov. 5, 1990).

The TEMPO project will be managed by the Defense Telecommunications Service--Washington which operates the DoD administrative telecommunications system in the National Capital Region. It will connect with a variety of other Defense networks including the Autovon and DDN networks, as well as the federal government's FTS-2000 network.