Lumen Technologies has received a task order from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to deliver a fully integrated wide area data transport service. The contract includes secure remote access, and contact center and cloud connectivity solutions to more than 9,500 USDA locations.
Lumen put the value of the task order at $1.2 billion, marking at least the second significant government contract the company has won recently. In September, Lumen was awarded a contract to modernize the U.S. Postal Service’s network services.
“One of America’s largest cabinet agencies chose Lumen to securely modernize its network and IT services. We’re excited to help the USDA benefit from today’s digital technologies that are transforming farming into precision agriculture,” said Zain Ahmed, senior vice president, Lumen public sector, in a prepared statement about the Lumen USDA contract. “Lumen is bringing modern technology solutions that will make it easier for the USDA to accomplish its mission of promoting the production of nutritious food that nourishes our people, providing economic opportunity to rural Americans, and preserving our nation’s natural resources through smart forest and watershed conservation.”
Under the 11-year task order, Lumen will provide the USDA with a managed network, managed security and voice solutions that support speeds up to 100 Gbps per second, including:
- Cloud connectivity;
- Contact center solutions;
- Edge computing and remote access solutions;
- Managed trusted internet protocol services (MTIPS);
- Software-defined wide area network services (SD-WAN);
- Unified communications and collaboration solutions;
- Virtual private network services; and
- Zero-trust networking solutions.
The new Lumen USDA contract was awarded to the company under the General Services Administration’s 15-year, $50 billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program.
