AT&T Selected for 10-Year, $311 Million Task Order to Modernize NOAA's Network in Support of Its Mission for the Next Decade

Nov. 17, 2020

What's the news? AT&T* will deliver modern networking capabilities and other advanced technologies to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under a Task Order from NOAA valued at $311 million over 10 years. The Task Order was made under the General Service Administration's (GSA) Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program, which the government created to help federal agencies modernize their technology infrastructure.

Why is this important? NOAA wants to modernize and transform its networking technologies and lay the foundation for 5G and multi-access edge computing capabilities. Using EIS, NOAA is acquiring from AT&T networking infrastructure and advanced capabilities that can power its mission well into the next decade.

A key reason the agency needs the capabilities is the alarming rate at which weather events are impacting the U.S. The first 9 months of 2020 brought a record-tying 16 different billion-dollar disasters. NOAA is America's environmental intelligence agency, responsible for daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings and climate monitoring as well as fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce. Its products and services support economic vitality and affect more than 1/3 of America's Gross Domestic Product.

What is the scope of NOAA's network modernization? Under this agreement, we will transform NOAA's current networking model, moving from a multiple vendor environment to a single, seamless next-generation communications platform. This consolidation of networks onto a single IP-based network can help reduce network outage risks and improve network and application availability. AT&T's network modernization effort for NOAA is comprehensive. We will modernize NOAA's networking services across the breadth of its U.S. Territories and international operations including its headquarters and 6 line offices. These include the National Weather Service (NWS), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Ocean Service (NOS), Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), and Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO). 

We will deliver advanced technologies including unified communications, virtual private networking, IP-based wireless and wireline networking. With NOAA, we will manage this network and its security services. We expect our network capabilities will enhance the speed of data transmission across NOAA's organizations and support task efficiencies in everyday operations such as communications and weather data collection, sharing, analysis and publishing. Ultimately, our advanced technologies will support the entirety of NOAA's mission, shared across the NOAA workforce who will be using them to help keep the public informed of the changing environment around them: from the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean floor.

Quote from Zachary Goldstein, Chief Information Officer, NOAA: "Telecommunications is vital to NOAA's missions. Moving to Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions is key to modernizing our telecommunications and continuing to advance our service to the American people."

Quote from Chris Smith, Vice President-Civilian and Shared Services, AT&T Public Sector and FirstNet: "NOAA's mission is highly data intensive requiring the most sophisticated advanced networking services commercially available. This Task Order award is testimony to our capability to deliver robust and reliable services at scale and manage them end-to-end to help government agencies like NOAA improve mission fulfillment."

When does the work begin? Network implementation services begin immediately.