AT&T rings up Postal Service contract extension

AT&T Government Solutions has won a four-year, $120 million contract extension to provide additional network services to U.S. Postal Service facilities nationwide.

Under terms of the extension of the Postal Advanced Telecommunications Network contract, AT&T will provide managed network services including IP address management, design and engineering, onsite installations, router service, firewall and interactive voice response.

“The extension covers a broad variety of products and services, the largest of which is our IP network services,” Stacy Schwartz, sales center vice president at AT&T Government Solutions, told Washington Technology.

AT&T’s global Multiprotocol Label Switching-enabled network (MPLS) is a fully managed, highly secure, scalable data network that will continue to serve as the platform for this network solution, a company statement said.

MPLS is designed to provide the necessary bandwidth securely and efficiently. It allows customers to prioritize and increase their traffic and expand to include more sophisticated bandwidth requirements, Schwartz said.

In addition to some of USPS’ large facilities, the Postal Service also has tens of thousands of retail points of sale and partner locations, and the agency provides the basic connectivity for all those locations, she said.

“Pretty much all the traffic that supports their enterprise is riding on our infrastructure,” Schwartz said, including the tracking of bar codes on all packages and certified mail.

AT&T Government Solutions is a unit of AT&T Inc., of San Antonio, Texas, which ranks No. 42 on Washington Technology’s 2009 Top 100 list of the largest federal government prime contractors.