Verizon lands massive $2.5 billion DoD service contract

Verizon will provide managed telecom services for military bases throughout the world

Verizon Business has signed a contract that could be worth up to $2.5 billion to provide telecom services to U.S. military installations around the world.

Under the terms of the contract, Verizon will provide fully managed transmission services for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Pacific-region Defense Information Network System (DISN) that covers military installations in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as regions of Canada, Central and South America and the Middle East. The network is the Defense Department's official enterprise-class network for providing data, video and voice services. Marlin Forbes, a regional vice president for Verizon Federal, says the network supports everything from personnel and medical systems to intelligence programs.

The contract calls for Verizon to manage the Pacific portion of the DISN for a minimum of five years, with options that could tack on an additional five years. If all options on the contract are exercised, it will be worth a total of $2.5 billion to Verizon Business. Forbes says Verizon Business will supply high-bandwidth services for the network, with speeds ranging up to 10Gbps. Verizon will use several of its undersea cables to deliver bandwidth for the network, including the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) cable and the Europe India Gateway cable that spans 13 countries from Europe to the Middle East to India.

Verizon will also fully manage the service for the Department of Defense and provide them with critical data on network usage and traffic trends.

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Verizon Business has signed a contract that could be worth up to $2.5 billion to provide telecom services to U.S. military installations around the world.

Under the terms of the contract, Verizon will provide fully managed transmission services for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Pacific-region Defense Information Network System (DISN) that covers military installations in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as regions of Canada, Central and South America and the Middle East. The network is the Defense Department's official enterprise-class network for providing data, video and voice services. Marlin Forbes, a regional vice president for Verizon Federal, says the network supports everything from personnel and medical systems to intelligence programs.

The contract calls for Verizon to manage the Pacific portion of the DISN for a minimum of five years, with options that could tack on an additional five years. If all options on the contract are exercised, it will be worth a total of $2.5 billion to Verizon Business. Forbes says Verizon Business will supply high-bandwidth services for the network, with speeds ranging up to 10Gbps. Verizon will use several of its undersea cables to deliver bandwidth for the network, including the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) cable and the Europe India Gateway cable that spans 13 countries from Europe to the Middle East to India.

Verizon will also fully manage the service for the Department of Defense and provide them with critical data on network usage and traffic trends.

"We'll look at the amount of bandwidth being used and will also provide them with information on any latency or any sort of jitter," Forbes says. "If we saw anything out of the ordinary such as a potential [distributed denial-of-service attack on the network, we'd have the ability to investigate that and we'd alert them to it."

The new contract signed by Verizon essentially serves as an extension, as Verizon Business has been managing the Pacific portion of the DISN for the past nine years. The company inherited its original contract for managing the network from MCI, which Verizon officially acquired in 2006.

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