MoD gives BT another tour of duty in £640m deal

MoD extends BT's Defence Fixed Telecommunications Service contract to 2015

The MoD has awarded an £640m contract to BT

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has extended BT's (BT) Defence Fixed Telecommunications Service (DFTS) contract by three years to 2015 in a deal worth £640m.

"DFTS provides secure and survivable wide area network voice, data and video telecommunications services to defence users in the UK and abroad, and also to defence and industry partners including the National Air Traffic Systems and the Met Office," said Peter Luff, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence.

"The services provided under the contract are vital to the daily operation of the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces, both in peace and at war," he added.

Luff said he expected the programme to achieve net operational and financial benefits in excess of £90m, leading to improvements in performance and security. A number of impending obsolescence issues will also be resolved.

He also said that prior to 2015, the MoD will perform a major overhaul in the way it procures and manages voice, data, video and information and communication technology services.

DFTS provides the UK Armed Forces with a single multi-service platform. It replaced 19 separate legacy networks serving the Royal Navy, the British Army, The Royal Air Force, and the MoD itself in 1997, and now covers the whole UK defence community.

The agreement gives the MoD a single supplier, optimising support and transferring the risk to BT, which is responsible for service interoperability and integration.

The original DFTS agreement was signed in 1997 when the MoD needed to transform its disparate communications into a secure and connected communications infrastructure. BT began by merging 19 separate networks into a single system. Since then the contract has delivered new capabilities to address MoD requirements, and to take advantage of new technologies.