DoD awards telecom deals worth up to $3B

Little-known Arrowhead is big winner, though AT&T and Qwest are also in mix.

AT&T, Qwest and Arrowhead Global Solutions will provide access services to military bases in the continental United States under a 10-year Defense Department program that could be worth as much as $3 billion.

These carriers were selected for the Defense Information Systems Network Access Transport Services program, which is known by the acronym DATS. The Defense Department awarded three DATS contracts in late October.

Shut out of the DATS program were Verizon Business and Sprint, who reportedly bid on the military’s mammoth bandwidth-purchasing program.

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AT&T, Qwest and Arrowhead Global Solutions will provide access services to military bases in the continental United States under a 10-year Defense Department program that could be worth as much as $3 billion.

These carriers were selected for the Defense Information Systems Network Access Transport Services program, which is known by the acronym DATS. The Defense Department awarded three DATS contracts in late October.

Shut out of the DATS program were Verizon Business and Sprint, who reportedly bid on the military’s mammoth bandwidth-purchasing program.

Under the DATS program, the carriers will provide dedicated private-line services in a range of speeds to carry voice, data and video traffic from military bases to the Defense Department’s backbone network. DoD’s next-generation backbone network is called GIG-BE, which stands for Global Information Grid – Bandwidth Expansion.

DoD divided the continental United States into four regions for the DATS program. AT&T and Qwest were each awarded a contract for one of the regions, while Arrowhead Global Solutions was awarded a contract for two regions.

The incumbent on DATS is AT&T, which previously supported all four regions of the country. Now AT&T will support the Midwest only.

AT&T, Qwest, Verizon Business and Sprint bid on all four regions of the United States for the DATS program, industry observers said.

"DATS provides a large portion of the Defense Department’s switching infrastructure in the continental United States," says Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president of FedSources, a McLean, Va., consulting firm. "DATS will connect the end users to the backbone network."

DATS is the largest contract ever won by Arrowhead, a minority- and woman-owned small business based in Falls Church, Va. that provides satellite and terrestrial communications services to the U.S. government.

Arrowhead will provide access services to military bases in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the United States. Arrowhead says its DATS contracts will be worth at least $200 million over the next decade.

"We’ve proposed building our own system using a variety of carriers," says Lisa Belt, DATS program manager at Arrowhead. "We have not released our team members yet because we are still in negotiations."

Belt says DATS is the largest deal that the company has ever won that wasn’t a set-aside for small or minority-owned businesses.

"We’re proud of this one because we didn’t compete as a small business but in a full and open competition," Belt says. "We targeted these two regions and bid on them specifically."

Arrowhead doesn’t have commercial customers, but "DATS poises us to go in that direction," Belt adds.

Winning DATS also is significant for Qwest, which estimates its share of the DATS program to be worth at least $100 million. Qwest will support military bases and posts in nine Western states.

In addition to the private lines, Qwest will provide network equipment, including routers and multiplexers, as well as a Web portal that will make it easy for the Defense Department to price and order services.