TelstraClear’s lucrative govt contract up for grabs

Mon, 9th Nov 2009

FYI, this story is more than a year old

TelstraClear’s multi-million dollar contract to manage the bulk of the government’s advanced education network is being split into three and put up for tender. In addition, an RFP for international connectivity has also been issued.

REANNZ has issued RFPs for three specific aspects of the national network. These are national connectivity, service management services and supply of switches. REANNZ is responsible for KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research Education Network) which provides fast connectivity to the country’s major educational institutions.

According to RFP documents KAREN has 70 members and connects 120 sites, with monthly traffic across all ports of 1-3 petabytes. More information about the network can be found here.

An initial government grant of $43 million was awarded in April 2006 to establish the network over four years.

At the time of the contracts being awarded, a press release issued by TelstraClear described the services it would be providing by quoting REANNZ Chairman Dr Jim Watson as follows: “TelstraClear will install both the optical transmission network, which operates at 10 Gigabits per second, and the REANNZ routers and switches. TelstraClear subsidiary Sytec will provide first level help desk and network management services which will be backed by REANNZ and TelstarClear technical teams.”CEO Donald Clark says in addition to TelstraClear there are 15 othersuppliers and achieving diversity of suppliers is part of theorganisation’s constitution.

Clark says that they've decided to split the national aspect of the network into three parts to encourage further diversity. “We’ve said we’d like to explore the separability of these but the RFP also provides for us to combine as well,” he says.

The contracts will be for between two to four years, with no budget indicated. The current arrangement for national connectivity expires in December 2010.

Meanwhile the contract for international connectivity has a maximum budget of $16 million. Earlier this year REANNZ tendered for an international supplier as its connectivity agreement with Verizon is due for renewal on in March 2010, however this process was unsuccessful – see article here.

REANNZ is holding workshops for prospective tenderers this month.