The Nato Communications and Information (NCI) Agency has awarded Airbus a €40 million ($46.2 million) contract for the delivery of the first phase of the new Nato Communications Infrastructure Project.
The contract also includes options for future phases of the project, worth up to €50 million ($57.8 million).
The Nato Communications Infrastructure project will replace a major
part of the Nato General Communications System (NGCS), involving 72 Nato
sites. It will provide a major upgrade of wide area network protected
IP communications across the Nato command structure, Nato headquarters
and Nato points of presence in member nations.
The project covers the delivery of upgraded IP access and transport
services across different security classifications with significantly
increased capacity, quality of service and traffic engineering
capabilities. It also covers Nato unclassified voice services through
the replacement of old telephony switches by voice over IP telephony at
25 sites.
The design review is estimated to be completed in December 2018 while
the first phase of implementation should be completed by the end of
2019.
The Nato Communications Infrastructure Project, together with the IT
Modernisation Project and the Enterprise Nato Public Key Infrastructure
Project, is part of the wider IT Modernisation Programme which aims to
transform Nato's static IT infrastructure into a homogeneous enterprise.
It will include customer-funded service delivery systems, with a common
service management and control layer, increased levels of
virtualisation, modern cloud technology, and appropriate resilience
mechanisms. - TradeArabia News Service