North American Network Operators Group

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Re: NPR morning news apparently just reported...

  • From: Christopher L. Morrow
  • Date: Fri May 23 19:02:43 2003


On Fri, 23 May 2003 [email protected] wrote:

>
> On Fri, 23 May 2003, Mike Tancsa wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > A government contract handed out not on technical merit, but for back room
> > political reasons ?  Shocking!
> >
> >          ---Mike
> >
> > At 01:33 PM 23/05/2003 -0700, Bill Woodcock wrote:
> >
> > >     > According to this article, yes they were involved with
> > >     > AWCC:
> > >     > http://www.afghanwireless.com/news_6apr.html
> > >
> > >Ouch.  If they were responsible for AWCC, that would hardly seem to be a
> > >basis for awarding them another similar contract.
>
> The funny this is at the state agencies I've worked for we were *required*
> to go through a bidding procedure prior to getting final approval for a
> purchase.  Unless we had an established relationship with a given company
> for similar products or services we had to follow the procedures.  I
> wouldn't at all be surprised to hear that sometime in the very near future
> a lawsuit was filed by various other telcos to try and get a piece of the
> pie or get the administration to be fair towards other telcos.  Who says
> it has to be a US telco?  Why can't it be a UK telco?

please note I'm not a business guy, nor do I know anything directly about
this case... BUT, perhaps the contract was awarded on/with the FTS200X
contract? (its 2002 now I believe that WCOM/MCI is the prime on... or
atleast heavily related too) That would mean the gov't had a vehicle to
just create a task order to make the network buildout happen... As to 'why
a us company', perhaps its being done under the auspices of: "The us gov't
needs a phone network in iraq while they are there, so build something
good and leave it behind, as a bonus to the luckyiraq people?"

(and not again the initial paragraph from me... add to that: I didn't read
either of these articles)