EPA picks Sprint as telecom provider
Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency this week notified the General Services Administration that the EPA had selected Sprint to provide its voice and data services under the FTS 2001 contract.
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency this week notified the General Services Administration that the EPA had selected Sprint to provide its voice and data services under the FTS 2001 contract.
George Kranich, chief of telecommunications services at EPA headquarters, said yesterday that the agency received good proposals from both of the FTS 2001 vendors—Sprint and MCI WorldCom—but Sprint's proposal was more suited to the agency's data requirements.
Kranich noted that the EPA was in the midst of planning a general reorganization of its information management structure. He said Sprint's proposal was "a better fit for the environment we want to operate in currently and in the future." He added that Sprint's prices also were superior to MCI's.
Jim Payne, assistant vice president for FTS 2000 at Sprint, said he believed the EPA selected his company on the basis of its forward-thinking philosophy and its data services offerings for frame relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode.
Kranich said he hopes to begin moving voice traffic—now running on AT& T's FTS 2000 network—onto Sprint's network in July. He said the EPA would work with Sprint and GSA to determine when data services, which will include the EPA's supercomputer network as well as its administrative traffic, will transition.
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