Sprint wins Army National Guard network modernization contract: $36 million GuardNet project will use unique, government-grade network, Sprint Peerless IP - GuardNet

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Oct 27, 2003

Sprint (NYSE:FON, PCS) announced recently that it has been awarded a new contract for the Army National Guard's network modernization and bandwidth expansion project, called GuardNet. The contract, which includes migrating the National Guard's current MCI-provided ATM services to the government-grade Sprint peerless IP Network, is valued at $18 million in equipment and services its first year; total contract value with options is estimated at $36 million over five years.

"We were looking for a cost-effective and streamlined way to move nearly 60 sites from an ATM network to an IP-based network," said LTC James Lord with the National Guard Bureau, Automated Information Systems/Enterprise Architecture group. "Sprint presented us with a solid technical solution, a good price and the ability to make the transition without the layer of complexity that working through a systems integrator might have added." Lord stated that the project was competitively bid by the National Guard through GovWorks.

The GuardNet project represents the latest federal contract for IP services tied to the unique Sprint peerless IP network, the only IP network from a major carrier that has no physical connectivity with the public Internet. Sprint announced the build out of this "government-grade network" earlier this year and has seen tremendous interest in the network from federal government agencies since the network was completed this summer.

"The Sprint peerless IP network is specifically tailored to meet the performance and security demands of government customers by eliminating connections to the public Internet and creating a closed user group environment," said Tony D'Agata, vice president and general manager for Sprint's Government Systems Division. "We're very pleased to be able to offer this unique solution to the Army National Guard and to assist them with their important network modernization project."

The Sprint GuardNet contract will include migration of ATM traffic to the Sprint Peerless IP Network at 58 sites throughout the United States and its territories, routers and related IP networking equipment from Sprint alliance partner Cisco, and videoconferencing equipment from Tandberg. The National Guard will retain network management functions.

The first to deploy a nationwide, all-digital fiber-optic network, Sprint operates one of the world's few Tier-1 IP networks, SprintLink. The SprintLink OC-192 backbone is implemented as a native IP platform as opposed to a less efficient IP over ATM architecture used by many providers in the industry. The Sprint peerless IP Network uses this same architecture and provides the same industry leading performance without connectivity to the Internet.

Sprint Government Systems Division is based in Herndon, Va., and offers the full range of Sprint product and service offerings for federal and state government customers.