Telecommunications services

Tender description

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) published a PIN, reference 2019-146075, on 21 October 2019 to initiate pre-market analysis for two strands of its connectivity procurement: (i) the procurement of a network integration service; and (ii) the establishment and operation of a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) for global internet connectivity services. The FCO, the Department for International Development (DFID) and the British Council (BC) (together the ‘Partners’)are now developing the tender documentation to enable the procurement of Global Internet Connectivity Services via a DPS. Potential suppliers should note that on 16 June 2020, the UK Government announced that it would merge the FCO and DFID to form a new department, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which the Government plans to create by September 2020. The timescales for the procurement of the DPS are such that it is likely that the new department will be the Contracting Authority for the DPS. The partners’ global connectivity requirements are currently provided by a single supplier which has responsibility for the provision of the bulk of the partners’ local and wide area network requirements. The partners are disaggregating their connectivity requirements into: (i) network integration services, the scope of which comprises MPLS and VSAT connectivity, an intelligent routing platform, secure internet gateway and related services; and (ii) global Internet connectivity. The scope of this PIN is the proposed procurement of Internet connectivity at approximately 500 partner sites in approximately 175 countries. The FCO is proposing to establish a DPS for the procurement of global Internet connectivity. Potential suppliers can apply to join the DPS at any time following the publication of the contract notice. Once the DPS is established, suppliers that have successfully qualified to join the DPS may be invited to take part in a series of procurements for the provision of global Internet connectivity at the partner sites. The size and scope of these future procurements have not yet been established by the partners. The network integration service is the subject of a separate procurement. The contract notice for the network integration service, reference 2020/S 106-258337, was published on 3 June 2020. The FCO has produced a descriptive document that provides further information on the partners and their global connectivity requirements. Potential suppliers will need to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) before the descriptive document is released to them. The NDA is available from Craig Wormleighton (see Section I.1)