BT has won a contract to supply external network
services to 15 European Union (EU) institutions, including the
European Commission and the European Parliament.
The four- to eight-year contract is valued at €162m (£113m), the
London-based network operator said.
BT will provide a variety of secure IP (Internet protocol)
network services including wide area networks (Wans), remote
access, telecommuting, internet fallback and network consultancy,
according to BT spokesman Alan Ball.
"There is room for growth within the contract to provide a wider
scope of services in the future, including voice-over-IP," Ball
said.
Currently, worldwide access to and from remote sites of the
commission, Parliament and European Council comes through different
types of circuits, including leased lines, satellite links and
virtual circuits, according to the EU Directorate-General for
Informatics (DIGIT), the department that tendered the contract.
That framework will be replaced in a migration period expected to
last at least 18 months, DIGIT said.
Terms of the initial four year contract, signed 24 September,
allow it to be extended by an additional four years, subject to
reviews every two years. BT and DIGIT declined to name the other
companies that participated in the contract tender process launched
last year.
"We provided the original contract to the EU, so in a sense,
this is a renewal of that contract but with a larger mandate," Ball
said.
In terms of volume, over eight years the Wan services are
expected to have 370 service objects with 1,040 operations, the
remote access services will require 256,000 hours of consumption
for different user profiles, and up to 2,800 individual teleworking
service sites will be required, DIGIT said. BT estimates that it
will subcontract 48% of the work, according to DIGIT.
In addition to the commission, Parliament and Council, several
other EU institutions will be services under the contract: the
Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the European Economic and
Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, the European
Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions,
the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products, the
Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union, the
European Food Safety Authority, the European Maritime Safety
Agency, the European Aviation Safety Agency and the European Agency
for Reconstruction.
Laura Rohde writes for IDG News Service