State Department Awards Verizon $1.58B IT Modernization Contract
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The contract tasks Verizon with modernizing communications infrastructure and providing IT services to the agency’s embassies and other important locations.
Verizon won a new $1.58 billion contract—awarded under the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions vehicle—from the State Department to upgrade the agency’s communications network infrastructure at approximately 260 embassies around the world.
The EIS task order will last over the next 10 years. Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions is a $50 billion contract vehicle under the General Services Administration to allow the government to modernize its IT telecommunications and network infrastructure.
Pursuant to the contract, Verizon will modernize the communications infrastructure and provide IT services for the agency’s outposts in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America.
“We are uniquely qualified to provide the Department of State with powerful solutions to their global network consolidation and management needs,” Maggie Hallbach, senior vice president for public sector at Verizon, said. “We have supported the Department of Defense and other national security and civilian customers with global critical infrastructure and communications for more than three decades.”
The latest contract comes after Verizon won a $400 million modernization contract with the FBI in July and a $966.5 million deal with the Department of Defense in March. As deadlines for EIS IT modernization efforts loom, agencies are taking measures to upgrade their systems. For example, by Sept. 30 all of an agency’s telecoms should have moved from expiring contracts to EIS and agencies were supposed to sign memorandums of understanding for continuity of service. However, according to data as of Aug. 31 released by GSA, the federal government is only at a 69.1% transition rate to EIS.There is also an approaching deadline of Nov. 1, 2022, to May 31, 2023, for contractors to disconnect agencies without signed MOUs.
Verizon is one of nine vetted EIS contractors, according to GSA. Others include: AT&T, BT Federal, Comcast Government Services, Core Technologies, Granite Telecommunications, L3Harris, Lumen and Manhattan Telecommunications. In order to be listed under EIS vendors must offer virtual private network services, managed network services, voice services and ethernet.