Twenty years ago, I was working for AT&T Bell Laboratories on a special assignment, preparing the proposal for FTS-2000, the procurement of the US government’s Federal Telecom Services. It was an enormous project; a very large team of us got relocated to the outskirts of Washington. I spent months commuting between DC, New Jersey and Illinois. It was also a great team building and learning experience.
I reminisced about the days working on FTS-2000 when I read yesterday that AT&T;, Qwest and Verizon won pieces of the successor network, Networx Universal, potentially valued at up to $48B. Can you imagine a procurement of that scale? And that is $48B green dollars!
Once again, the US has gone multi-vendor, an approach I endorsed last November for the Canadian Government with its wireless services.
I like to think competition brings out the best in all of us.