Verizon and AT&T have both been authorized to operate under the GSA’s $50 billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract after successfully completing Business Support System (BSS) testing.
The 15-year EIS contract is meant to aid federal agencies as they migrate to modern telecom and IT services that support government security standards. GSA announced Monday that AT&T and Verizon both completed BSS functional and security testing and were issued a three-year Authority to Operate (ATO), enabling the providers to receive and process task orders, and deliver and bill for services.
“We’re excited to receive our ATO and will utilize best practices and lessons learned to support agencies’ unique requirements and transition them to EIS quickly and efficiently,” said Mike Maiorana, SVP of public sector at Verizon, in a statement.
The EIS contract was awarded in July 2017 and replaces legacy contracts including Networx, WITS and local service agreements. Those contracts were previously extended and set to expire by May 2020 because of the complexity of transitioning services to the EIS; however, that deadline has been pushed back further until May 2023 to make sure agencies have enough time to complete the transition process.
Under GSA’s EIS Transition Roadmap, agencies have until Sept. 30, 2019 to award EIS task orders and by March 2022, 90 percent of agencies’ telecom inventory must be off current contracts and moved to EIS.
AT&T and Verizon’s authorization follows CenturyLink, which last week was the first supplier to receive an ATO.
Along with AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink other approved EIS contract providers include BT Federal, Core Technologies, Granite Telecommunications, Harris Corp, MetTel, and MicroTech.