Optus kicks Telstra out of ATO in $186.5 million contract grab

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 10:47

Business IT - Technology

Optus has trumped the incumbent Telstra, snaring a $186.5 million four-year contract with the Australian Tax Office for the supply of managed network services (MNS).

Optus beat arch-rival and  incumbent, Telstra, which has been providing voice services carriage and facilities management for voice services since 2004 under five year contracts due to expire 30 June this year. Telstra also has an ESD help services contract with the ATO due to expire 30 June 2010.

An ATO spokesperson confirmed to iTWire that the four year contract is worth $186.5 million and that the services to be provided by Optus would replace those of the incumbent Telstra.

The ATO, which spends around $60.5 million a year on network services, awarded the contract to Optus which beat Telstra, Dimension Data and the Computer Sciences Corporation, in a competitive tender process over several months of last year and this year. Of the four companies, only Dimension Data and Optus were invited to enter into contract negotiations with the ATO.

The ATO and Optus today signed the contract for the MNS bundle.  Under the contract – the first of three IT sourcing bundles – Optus will provide data and voice carriage, telephony, wide area network and local area network, video conferencing, and call centre infrastructure and services.

Industry was first briefed on the MNS bundle way back in December 2007 and the ATO released an expression of interest in January last year, receiving submissions from seven companies.

The ATO says after their short listing, the four competing companies worked with it in focused workshops to collaborate on potential solutions for the specified MNS services.