Credit: PA

The Department for Work and Pensions has signed a £23m five-year deal with BT for the provision of network-access services.

The contract came in into effect on 26 March and, in addition to its scheduled 60-month term, can also be renewed for two further 12-month increments. 

According to the contract-award notice, the “network access service will deliver WAN services” to the department. This includes private, MPLS-based connections – which the DWP said are “to be eventually deprecated” – as well as public “internet access circuits”.

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The value of the engagement is pegged at £22.8m and the text of the contract indicated that this should cover everything outside of “NAS services that are priced on request”.

“The NAS service charges shall constitute full consideration for the provision of the Network Access services and are fully inclusive of all costs and expenses incurred in the completion of activities relating to implementation, delivery, management and performance of the network access services, including all costs associated with provision of the connectivity type.”

Types specified in the contract include broadband and fibre connections at speeds ranging from 100Mb to 10Gb.

It added: “The parties have not agreed any minimum or maximum volumes for the connectivity types associated with the network access services and accordingly the supplier shall not be entitled to vary the charges due to any variation in anticipated or actual volumes throughout delivery of the network access services.”