Lumen reels in $1.2 billion contract to overhaul USDA’s legacy network

Lumen Technologies landed a massive $1.2 billion contract with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), setting it up to give one of the biggest government agency networks a major makeover. Zain Ahmed, Senior Vice President of Lumen public sector, said the 11-year task order represents entirely new business for the company. Under the contract, Ahmed said Lumen will “completely transform” the USDA’s network covering 9,500 locations across the country. It will provide a range of services, including SD-WAN, managed trusted internet protocol, zero-trust networking, edge computing, remote access, virtual private networking, cloud connectivity, unified communications and collaboration, contact center, voice-over-internet protocol, ethernet transport, optical wavelength, and equipment and engineering. In addition to allowing the USDA to provide a better quality of service, Ahmed said the upgrade is also expected to save the agency money. He also said the USDA has “aggressive” timeline targets and Lumen is in the process of working with the agency on planning. Most transformations of this nature take around two to three years to complete, he added.