Qwest wins Arizona schools contract

(Telephony) Qwest Communications has won a $100 million contract to build broadband local area networks for Arizona’s 228 public school districts.

Slated for completion by June 2003, the LANs Qwest is constructing will provide Arizona’s 1222 public schools with transmission speeds up to 100 Mb/s, allowing for the use of bandwidth–intensive applications such as full motion streaming video and e-learning tools.

The contract, paid for by Arizona’s Students First school construction program and awarded by the state’s School Facilities Board, calls for Qwest to establish models for network construction in small, medium and large school districts.

In addition to construction, though, the agreement calls for Qwest to manage and provide services for multiple aspects of the project, including network consulting, architecture, maintenance and security throughout the length of the contract.

"Not only will we be constructing the networks," said a Qwest spokesman, "but we will also be maintaining and consulting on how to leverage power of networks."

Though the structure of the contract is fairly straightforward, said the spokesman, the agreement stands out for who and how many it serves.

"The state of Arizona and the School Facilities Board in particular decided to make an investment in the entire state to upgrade each school in the state. I’m not aware of another similar project like this," he said.