AT&T Bridge Contract Shuts Down

The federal government's transition to the FTS2001 long-distance contract is complete, with Sprint Communications Corp. and WorldCom Inc. taking over as the two primary long-distance providers.


A "thimbleful" of federal offices had their lines disconnected when AT&T Corp.'s contract expired at midnight Dec. 6, said a General Services Administration spokesman. AT&T, a holder of the FTS2000 contract, had provided long-distance services to agencies under a so-called "bridge contract" while they switched to the FTS2001 program.


"Whatever was left that didn't transition has been disconnected, and it was very, very small," the spokesman said. The GSA had negotiated the contract extension with AT&T in December 2000. About 63 circuits in nine federal departments, including Defense, Veterans Affairs, Social Security and the Smithsonian Institution, had not moved to the new contract when the bridge contract expired, he said.


WorldCom Inc., one of the two winners of the FTS2001 long-distance contract awarded two years ago, is working to take care of the agencies' needs.


"The agencies and GSA thought everybody had been transitioned; it was brought to our attention [that] a few things were overlooked, and there are teams working on this around the clock," Natasha Haubold of WorldCom said Dec. 7. "It's hard to tell how long it will take, because we're just now beginning to get the orders."


The bridge contract was an extension of AT&T's FTS2000 long-distance contract, which expired in late 1999. AT&T lost its bid to win a place on FTS2001, beaten out by Sprint Communications Corp. of Westwood, Kan., and WorldCom of Clinton, Miss.


The bridge contract, running from Dec. 7, 2000, to Dec. 6, 2001, was controversial when it was announced, in part because it was an extension of an extension: AT&T negotiated its first one-year bridge contract in December 1999 to give agencies time to make the change.


Sprint, which also had been a vendor on the original FTS2000 contract, received two extensions as well: the first for one year, the second for six months. The company completed its transition work by the second deadline.


The General Accounting Office determined that from December 2000 to April 2001 alone, Sprint and AT&T together billed almost $160 million in bridge services.


Qwest Communications International Inc., Denver, filed a protest of the extensions, claiming GSA did not follow procedures in granting the bridge contract, and that the contract raised prices and blocked competition. GAO dismissed the protest.