GeoNet II

For Immediate Release

SPRINT AWARDED $27 MILLION GEONET II CONTRACT BY U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 27, 1993 -- Sprint today announced an eight-year, $27.2 million contract to replace the current X.25-based GEONET I, a data network operated by the U.S. Geological Survey, with GEONET II.

The new GEONET II project will be managed and integrated by Sprint and will include local and wide area networking equipment, network management and installation, and maintenance support. Subcontractors to Sprint in the award include StrataCom, Cisco Systems and Motorola Codex.

The U.S. Geological Survey already runs multiple applications, such as frame relay, over its existing, 3-node network. The new network will extend service to more sites and will allow access to the network by other Department of the Interior bureaus.

The U.S. Geological Survey required that the network be upgradeable to Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), a next-generation switching technology that enables voice, video and data to be sent quickly and efficiently over shared transmission facilities, instantaneously providing users with large amounts of network capacity as it is needed.

The broadband technologies used in GEONET II will provide large amounts of network capacity on demand, allowing the agency to send digitized topological mapping information through the network quickly and economically. Frame relay and ATM also offer U.S. Geological Survey's expanding local area network (LAN) community higher throughput and improved response time.

"The GEONET II award leverages Sprint's expertise as one of the world's leading providers of private and public data networks," said Chris Rooney, president of Sprint's Government Systems Division. "The Sprint solution integrates products and services provided by a number of vendors in order to meet U.S. Geological Survey's unique networking and service requirements."

In a multi-million dollar component of the award, StrataCom will provide the wide area networking equipment with its IPX FastPacket T1 networking switch. The existing U.S. Geological Survey network uses three StrataCom IPX nodes over which it runs multiple applications including frame relay.

In addition, the network solution includes network routers provided by Menlo Park, Calif.-based Cisco Systems, Inc., the leading worldwide supplier of high-performance multimedia and multi-protocol internetworking products. Motorola Codex of Mansfield, Mass., market leader in branch networking products, will provide multiplexing equipment, transmission devices, and network management systems.

Sprint is a diversified international telecommunications company with more than $10 billion in annual revenues and the United States' only nationwide all-digital, fiber-optic network. Its divisions provide global long distance voice, data and video products and services, local telephone services to nearly 6 million subscriber lines in 19 states, and cellular operations that serve 42 metropolitan markets and more than 50 rural service areas.

EF/BG 042793

Contacts: Evette Fulton, Sprint 202-828-7427; (H) 703-533-3322 James Hott, U.S. Geological Survey 703-648-7010 Doug Droese, StrataCom 408-494-2026 Randall Sutherland, Cisco 415-903-8847 Mary Ellen Egemonye, Motorola Codex 508-261-4789