AT&T scores $725M contract with U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs

AT&T’s government contract winning spree continued, as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) handed it a $725 million task order to update the agency’s IP network.

The contract was awarded through General Service Administration’s (GSA) Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) technology procurement program. Chris Smith, VP of civilian and shared services for AT&T Public Sector and FirstNet, told Fierce the order is the largest EIS contract awarded by the VA to date.

Under the 12-year contract, AT&T will provide wide area networking, virtual private networking and managed network services. Smith explained that “opposed to the VA having to invest themselves and stand things up, they’re taking advantage of managed services and shared services in which we invest in the infrastructure and they take advantage of it.”

Smith said the upgrades to the VA’s network will allow it to transform processes across its more than 1,200 facilities, which provide veterans with healthcare, education and financial services. For instance, the VA will be able to adopt digital record sharing and medical imaging, improve asset tracking for key equipment and expand telehealth services. It will also be able to improve complementary services such as guest Wi-Fi in its hospitals.

He added AT&T is in “active discussions” about bringing 5G and mobile edge compute capabilities into the mix to potentially enable even more use cases, such as remote surgery.

“Having this resilient, adaptive network platform to help them modernize healthcare within their facilities…is critically important,” Smith said. “We’ve already begun work with them under the EIS awards and are well on the way to the transition and transformation…I think you’ll see over the next 12, 18, 24 months a great deal of work to bring these newer capabilities online.”

RELATED: AT&T snags $306M DHS contract to replace Verizon, Lumen

Last month, AT&T landed four network modernization contracts with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security worth $306 million, replacing Verizon and Lumen as the agency’s supplier. Earlier in the year, it also secured task orders with the Treasury Department and Department of Transportation.

AT&T is still in competition for dozens of additional agency contracts. All government telecom purchase agreements are required to be sourced through EIS by the end of September 2022.