The U.S. government is now seeking bids on a 10-year, $20 billion telecommunications services buy that is believed to be the largest pending network deal in the world, and carriers say they’re ready to respond.

The Networx program will provide legacy and leading-edge voice, data and video services to all U.S. federal agencies. Most major U.S. telecom carriers - AT&T, MCI, SBC, Sprint, Qwest and Verizon - are planning to bid on it.

The General Services Administration, which is running the Networx procurement, last week issued requests for proposals. The Networx bids are due in early August.

"We view Networx as an important part of our future overall," says Ed Bursk, vice president, government, for Global Crossing. "We do expect to make a major play into it. We have a team that has been working on this for almost a year now. We’ve been looking at the RFPs…and there are no real surprises from our perspective."

"Qwest is still very interested in Networx," says Jim Payne, senior vice president and general manager of Qwest Government Services Division. "This has been at the CEO level from almost the beginning. What everyone including Qwest will be doing now is refining their business cases and validating their approaches."

The GSA plans to award multiple contracts under its Networx program, which is divided into two parts: Universal and Enterprise.

Networx Universal covers 37 domestic and international telecom services ranging from older frame relay and asynchronous transfer mode to cutting-edge VPNs and VoIP. Likely universal bidders include AT&T, MCI, Sprint, SBC and Qwest.

Networx Enterprise, which is geared toward smaller carriers, includes a core set of IP and wireless services in particular geographic regions. Likely Enterprise bidders include Global Crossing, Verizon, Level 3 Communications, WilTel Communications, IDT and Broadwing Communications.

While GSA estimates that it will spend as much as $20 billion on Networx over the next decade, the winning bidders are guaranteed significantly less revenue. As is common in federal contracting, the government has committed to spend only $525 million on the Universal contracts and $50 million on the Enterprise contracts.

The GSA expects to announce the Networx winners in April 2006.