WASHINGTON- National Communications System official John Graves said today T-Mobile USA will be awarded a government contract by early next week to provide basic wireless priority access service to federal, state and local officials around the country, but he cautioned that funding challenges could complicate efforts to reach full operating capability on GSM and CDMA platforms nationwide.
“That [the T-Mobile contract] is imminent,” said Graves, director of the Government Telecommunications Service and manager of wireless priority access service acquisitions at NCS. The contract, whose value has yet to be disclosed, will be signed by DynCorp-NCS’s integration contractor for government wireless and wireline telephone service-and T-Mobile.
Most contract dollars will go to vendors like Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications L.P. and Nortel Networks. Graves said it is unclear whether the government will contract with Siemens AG on WPAS.
Graves said the T-Mobile nationwide contract covers only WPAS initial operating capability. He said he expects DynCorp to ink similar contracts with other GSM mobile-phone carriers, Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and AT&T Wireless Services Inc., next year.
Evolving to full operating capability for WPAS remains a challenge. Congress left town for the year without appropriating any of the $73 million. That money was earmarked to get WPAS deployed by GSM mobile carriers nationwide on a full-operating-capability basis. NCS will have to lobby for the funds as one of the 22 agencies folded into the new Department of Homeland Security.
“There’s nothing cheap about dealing with the cellular telephone industry,” said Graves, who praised T-Mobile’s enthusiasm and effort to get WPAS off the ground.
Graves said he wants Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS, the two national CDMA wireless carriers, to be part of the WPAS mix. But he said there is no money yet to underwrite the CDMA effort.
