DISA awards deals for bandwidth boost
- By Dawn S. Onley
- Oct 31, 2006
After numerous extensions, the Defense Information Systems Agency today awarded three contracts, worth up to $3 billion, to boost bandwidth on its Defense Information Systems Network.
The 10-year, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity DISN Access Transport Services contracts were awarded to Qwest Government Services Inc., AT&T Corp. and Arrowhead Global Solutions, Inc. A total of seven proposals were received.
DATS will provide upgraded, leased-access transmission services for the government-owned backbone network and connect more than a thousand military sites to the department's Global Information Grid-Bandwidth Expansion initiative. Performance will be at various locations within the United States.
DOD is requiring the transmission services to support bandwidths up to OC-192, offering 10-Gbps throughput.
As part of the DISN upgrade, many legacy voice, data and video systems as well as emerging capabilities'such as the department's main network-centric warfare initiatives'will shift to IP operation. DISN currently is a switched-circuit transport system. The upgrades will also replace two DISN contracts: the DISN Transmission Services CONUS (for the continental United States) and the DISN Switched/Bandwidth Manager Services CONUS.