WASHINGTON - Telecommunications giant Sprint announced plans Tuesday to launch a private IP network aimed at security-conscious U.S. government agencies by late June.

The new network, which doesn't yet have a name, will mimic Sprint's SprintLink enterprise-class, IP backbone network and offer most of the same features, except that it won't be connected to the public Internet. Sprint expects government agencies that want to be especially protective of data to be the first customers, said Steve Lunceford, a Sprint spokesman. The "government-grade" private Internet should have one or two government agencies as its customers by its launch in late June, he added.

The Sprint service is designed to ease customer worries that "someone in an Internet cafe in Beijing could get into the network," Lunceford said. Customers using the private network would have to use SprintLink or another public backbone for outside e-mail or Web surfing, but individual users won't be able to tell when they're switching back and forth, he added.

Berge Ayvazian, senior research fellow with the Yankee Group, said Sprint's timing is good, given that U.S. government agencies are becoming increasingly aware of security issues. The Sprint project is the first such private IP network aimed at government users, Ayvazian believes, and he sees customers converting from other private network services that don't use IP, such as frame-relay networks.

Lunceford talked up the efficiency and ease of use for IP-based networks as opposed to frame-relay networks or ATM networks. "The beauty is (IP) communicates with everything," Lunceford said. "A concern with going to an IP network is the connection to a public IP network. This is the best of both worlds."

Ayvazian isn't sure how big the market will be for such services, but he noted that the cost to Sprint was minimal because the company is using Cisco gear recycled from its ION (Integrated On-Demand Network) broadband service, aborted in late 2002. Sprint did not disclose the cost of constructing the new network.

"We already have the expertise to put the network in place and keep it maintained," Luceford said. "We were able to do this relatively inexpensively."

Sprint announced the new network at the GSA/FTS Network Services Conference in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday. "We think there's going to be a lot of interest," Lunceford said. "In the future, it could go beyond the government sector and into some big enterprises."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.