By Telecom Lead Team: The Postal Service of the U.S. has
selected mobile service provider Verizon as a prime contractor in the Postal
Service’s Telecommunications Integrated Postal Services (TIPN) contract. The
size of the six-year agreement is $186 million.
Verizon will continue to plan, design, install and manage
a private, converged Internet protocol communications network based on
multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) that supports many aspects of the U.S.
mail system today and provides a foundation for future technologies.
The agreement is significant as the United States Postal
Service delivers 584 million pieces of mail to more than 150 million addresses
and receives more than a million visitors to its website every day.
The Postal Service uses the network to help deliver the
mail efficiently and cost-effectively; inform and manage more than 550,000
employees; store and distribute data and documents; point of sale operations;
stay current on the latest internal developments; and augment customer service
efforts at more than 31,000 Postal Service locations.
Verizon had previously provided many of the network
services under the company’s Managed Network Services (MNS) contract with the
agency. Under that contract, awarded in 1997, the company established one
of the world’s largest private networks for the Postal Service. Verizon
will continue to manage this state-of-the-art network – round-the-clock, 365
days a year from Verizon’s dedicated network operations center in Cary,
N.C.
Verizon already provides the Postal Service with an array
of other services, including satellite services and telepresence
high-definition videoconferencing for video meetings, which will be supported
by the network infrastructure under the new award.
“The Postal Service’s operations are among the
most far-reaching and complex in the world, and Verizon is helping them keep
the mailing public connected every step of the way. Whether it’s tracking
Express Mail, selling stamps on usps.com
or linking more than 31,000 postal facilities, we’re delivering the
communications backbone that helps keep the mail on time in a modern
world,” said Susan Zeleniak, group president for Verizon Federal.