[SatNews] From the U.S. Army to the State of Iowa to Clear Channel in Texas...
TeleCommunication Systems, Inc. (TCS) (NASDAQ: TSYS) has been named as an awardee under a blanket purchase agreement (BPA) to provide consulting, information technology (IT), and support services to the U.S. Army. The potential value of awards under this BPA is $5 million per year through January 2013. The agreement allows TCS to bid on task orders for IT service management, network services, data center management, distributed computing, and application management through a state-of-the-art, scalable, performance-based service management and delivery framework. This agreement represents an expansion of TCS' existing relationship with the U.S. Army, for which it has been providing communications systems and services for five years. It is also a continuation of 23 years of TCS' provision of enterprise IT services to federal, state and local government customers.
The Company has also received an 11-month extension to its U.S. Army World-Wide Satellite Systems (WWSS) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract. Initially issued as a five-year, $5 billion multiple award contract in 2006 and expected to end later this month, the ordering period under the WWSS contract has been extended 11 months to July 27, 2012, with all deliveries required to be completed by August 28, 2012. As a result of the extension, TCS will continue to offer turn-key, single source, quick reaction solutions for emerging communications requirements worldwide in support of all federal missions. Such solutions include TCS' entire SwiftLink® suite of products and services that support secure, deployable communications. TCS leads a team of specialized satellite communications and logistics companies that provide a full range of operations, management and logistics products and services for the WWSS program. Over the past five years, the TCS WWSS Team demonstrated its proven ability to support today's Warfighter with Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products, services and integration technologies. Key elements of the contract extension continue to include: system integration; systems engineering; operations; maintenance; software support; program management; logistics; technical field assistance; test and evaluation; modeling and simulation; information operations and assurance support; training; depot support and administrative support to troops and personnel stationed around the globe. With the contract extension, TCS' highly successful SIPR NIPR Access Point (SNAP) VSAT and Wireless Point-to-Point Link (WPPL) Major Programs can continue to be awarded from the WWSS contract vehicle. The WWSS program is managed by the Program Management Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (PM WIN-T) Joint Program Management Office.
A third win for TCS is that the State of Iowa's Homeland Security Emergency Management Division (HSEMD) has awarded the firm a five-year contract valued at approximately $8.5 million to supply Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) systems and services. This emergency services network will comply fully with the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) i3 standards. These standards enable Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) to accept incoming emergency requests from wireless, Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)-based and Internet Protocol (IP)-based end-users. The TCS NENA i3-based solution will enable Iowa HSEMD to use the diverse and redundant IP networks owned and operated by the State. Initially, TCS will enable legacy wireless calls and legacy i2 Voice over IP (VoIP) calls to be delivered via the new Next Generation 9-1-1 solution; additional plans include support of emergency requests using text, images and video. This solution is expected to be the first NENA i3 compliant Next Generation 9-1-1 system in the United States to be deployed on a state-wide basis. The TCS NG9-1-1 solution offers public safety providers options to increase control over the system, bypass costly legacy architecture and deploy the solution as systems, services or a mix of the two within any existing IP network.
A fourth contract finds Lubbock, TX-based ClearTalk Wireless having selected the TCS-hosted Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) service to meet the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) April 2012 deadline for providing subscribers with automatic alerts in times of crisis. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN), based upon the Commercial Mobile Alert System specification, is a new public safety system that allows customers who own an enabled mobile device to receive geographically targeted messages alerting them of imminent threats to safety (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) in their current location. The FCC issued the 2012 mandate to create a life-saving service that will allow FEMA to deliver timely and accurate emergency alerts and warnings to the cell phones of citizens in targeted geographical areas. The FCC proposed and adopted the network structure, operational procedures and technical requirements in 2007 and 2008 in response to the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act passed by Congress in 2006. The TCS location-based emergency alert messaging capability not only helps ClearTalk Wireless to comply with the WARN Act, but also enables commercial message broadcasts of geographically relevant information, such as enterprise notifications, traffic, news, and coupons. ClearTalk Wireless will receive all aspects of the TCS CMAS service, including system design, integration, testing, deployment and the use of TCS' proven public safety platform and TL-9000 certified facilities.
