Intercepts

N/MCI UPDATE. After a month out of the office, the first thing I decided to check after firing up the PC was the status of the Navy/Marine Corps Intranet and the pre-solicitation conference promised after July's Industry Day. But a quick check of the N/MCI World Wide Web site (c4iweb.spawar.navy.mil/nmci/index2.htm) indicated that the conference had been canceled until further notice. I am more than disappointed, as it's hard to beat the kind of fun you can have at a pre-solicitation conference.

Curious to find out what is going on with N/MCI, I delved deeper into the Web site. It looks like Joe Cipriano and the rest of the gang at the Navy CIO's office have decided to forgo a formal conference and instead allocated five days—Sept.20 through Sept. 24—for more intimate "industry meetings." This nugget of information can be found in a file ferreted out of the Download section of the main page named NMCI_MIT_081299_final.ppt.

Scroll through that monster, and way at the end you'll find a new schedule for the N/MCI, which indicates a slip in the award date, from May to June 2000. The big boys are still jockeying for position on this $2 billion opportunity, but I'm told that because of the size and complexity of the 450,000-seat N/MCI, it has attracted a relatively small pool of bidders, including Computer Sciences Corp., IBM Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Wang Government Services. I understand Electronic Data Systems Corp. still is pondering the bid.

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NO MORE NAVY BPAS FOR FY '99? My Old Town San Diego antenna site has picked up strong signals that Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command commander Adm. John Gauss has issued an edict against awarding any more Navy BPAs for the remainder of the fiscal year. That would make sense, as the various commands within the Navy probably have awarded BPAs worth enough to equip every sailor in all the navies of the world with a PC.

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EXPANDING THE DISN AGAIN. The Defense Information Systems Agency put a request for information out on the street last week for yet another extension of the Defense Information Systems Network, this time for DISN Satellite Transmission Services Global, billed as a complement to the Commercial Satellite Communications Initiative contract held by Comsat Mobile Communications.

DSTS-G is a big one, covering C-band and Ka-band fixed satellite services, hub and spoke VSAT service, and even satellite-based tracking services. If you need more info, please call Karen Erickson, the DSTS-G contracting officer, at (703) 681-6496.

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CROSSFIRE IN KOSOVO. My pals at Courthouse Road just signed a contract to broadcast CNN's "Crossfire" as well as Headline News, CNN Domestic and CNN International via the Joint Broadcast Service on the Bosnian Command and Control System to troops serving in the Balkans. Nothing like finishing a patrol in a tense region and then heading back to the CP to hear about the world's other trouble spots.