[58585] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: NPR morning news apparently just reported...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher L. Morrow)
Fri May 23 19:00:40 2003
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 22:59:54 +0000 (GMT)
From: "Christopher L. Morrow" <chris@UU.NET>
To: listuser@numbnuts.net
Cc: Mike Tancsa <mike@sentex.net>, nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0305231555300.29672-100000@bubba.numbnuts.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Fri, 23 May 2003 listuser@numbnuts.net 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)
