DCCCD awards 10-year telecom contract to AT&T

The Dallas County Community College District has signed a contract with AT&T to be the new internet service provider for all campuses in the district.

The contract will last for a term of 10 years and is worth $1.77 million. It will merge the data and voice systems for the district, according to Steve Glick, the associate district director of information technology.

The new contract was agreed on after a bidding process was initiated, anticipating the end of the current contract with Teleport Communications. Glick said that the end of the contract with Teleport was the only reason the District solicited new bids and that performancerelated issues were not behind the change.

“Periodically, we open the market to bidding,” said Glick. “That's the way things work in the public sector, and it works very well in our case. This was a market-driven change, with the byproduct being the convergence of our voice and data networks.”

Glick is optimistic, however, about AT&T's ability to increase the performance of the network over the current levels. He believes that the new system will make the network approximately five times faster.

Renee Haygood, technical sales support agent for AT&T, said that the changes required replacing the Wide-Area Network (WAN) for the districts.

“The new network could grow speeds to one gigabyte over time,” said Haygood. Initially, she said, the network will run at about 250 megabytes.

AT&T will provide technical support for the WAN and will be available to the District at all times, said Haygood.

“The service will be monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by our technicians, who can be on site at any time,” she added.

The contract was initially awarded to Southwestern Bell Communications (SBC), but SBC merged with AT&T by the time the contract was finalized.

AT&T has hubs in Dallas, Chicago and California, according to Haygood.