£500m telecoms deal up for grabs

Buying Solutions gets busy

Buying Solutions has started the procurement process for a new Managed Telecommunications Service.

The procurement agency of the Office of Government Commerce has published a tender inviting applications for places on a framework agreement that could be worth up to £500m over four years.

It marks a significant change from the original plan for the Ocean Programme, which was intended to bring the MTS tender together with those for the Foreign Telecommunications Network (FTN) and Government Secure Intranet (GSI) under a single framework.

The FTN was removed from the framework and its own procurement was launched in June. The new tender specifies it is for the MTS, indicating that the plan to keep it within the same framework as the GSI has been abandoned.

A spokesperson for Buying Solutions told GC News that the Ocean Programme is still going ahead but in a different form, and that the GSI procurement will be run separately. The tender document says it is one of a number of procurements aimed at providing telecommunications services in line with Public Sector Network standards.

It says Buying Solutions is looking for a maximum of four suppliers, who will take part in a one or more further competitions for contracts to replace the existing MTS. It suggests the organisation is leaving its options open to replace the managed service currently provided by Global Crossing with a services from different suppliers.

The framework will include voice, video, unified communications and network services.

This article was originally published at Kable.

Kable's GC weekly is a free email newsletter covering the latest news and analysis of public sector technology. To register click here.