Telstra scores major share of $66m NSW Transport deal

NSW's transport cluster has secured suppliers for the second-last bundle of work in its mammoth next-generation infrastructure services overhaul, handing Telstra the majority of its telco operations.

Telstra has been contracted to provide fixed voice services to the group of transport agencies for the coming five years under a $41.3 million agreement. 

Transport for NSW opted to meet its mobile needs through a panel arrangement rather than signing up a single supplier.

It has contracted both Telstra and Optus to the standing offer deal, which is estimated to be worth a combined $22 million over five years.

The next-generation infrastructure services (NGIS) project involves a complete overahaul of TfNSW's data centre operations, end-user computing, and network outsourcing supply deals.

In 2013 TfNSW took the opportunity to break up a number of long-running agency contracts that were all expiring at a similar time, and bundle them together into a new buying strategy.

IBM was handed $99 million last November to become the agency's data centre partner, and consolidate and migrate 3000 servers and four petabytes of data from the agency's 20 data centres into one of the NSW Government's 'GovDC' facilities.

NEC was appointed under a five-year, $134 million deal to run the agency's 25,000 desktop PCs and up to 10,000 mobile devices, as well as a new common collaboration platform.

The final networking bundle of work involves the replacement of existing legacy networks and the re-contracting of the fixed voice, mobile and managed network services deals.

"[The] fixed voice and mobile services ... will consolidate and rationalise all carrier voice services from multiple existing arrangements," an agency spokesperson said.

"This work will help us streamline our fixed voice and mobile contracts, reduce operating costs and provide a better experience for our end users."

The new arrangements will include recontracting 22,900 mobiles, 9200 public switched telephone networks (PSTN), 850 integrated services digital networks (ISDN) and around 300 inbound voice services.

All that's now left of the NGIS project is a new managed network services provider. Transport for NSW said it planned to award a contract before the end of the year.