Two weeks ago, I reported on the much anticipated pending award of the largest-ever Federal telecommunications contract called Networx.  This 10-year deal massive upgrade program is worth up to $48 Billion (which is the spending cap limit.)  And yesterday (March 29th) the winners were chosen.

AT&T, Verizon and (surprise!) Qwest will share an immediate $525 million GSA award, and then compete for business to provide telephone, data, satellite and wireless services across 135 (of 184) agencies.  Sprint was totally shut out of the program by the GSA, a serious loss to them, as they had been providing telecom services to the federal government for nearly 20 years.  Estimates are that Sprint might have about $200-250M in existing government business that is at risk of disappearing.  (Sprint stock is now down 20% from a year ago.)

In contrast, this is huge news for Qwest, who had already been doing business with about 50 agencies.  If Qwest were able to actually get one-third of the contracts available, the up-to $16B in revenue would certainly have a positive impact on their bottom line.  Qwest is clearly the big winner here, as most people were speculating that Verizon and AT&T already had strong reputations and appeared as the favorites.

For other perspectives on the news, the Wall Street Journal report is here (subscription required) and here is a view from Ovum's EuroView Daily Comment as well as one from Network World , this Bloomberg video clip and CNN.  It was a big news day in the world of Telecom.