Bechtel National said it had awarded a $25 million subcontract to...
Bechtel National said it had awarded a $25 million subcontract to Lucent Technologies to carry out emergency repair and rehabilitation of the communications network in Iraq. It said it had estimated that 80% of the actual deployment work would…
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be done by Iraqi workers and engineers. The project, which Bechtel said was the first major communications infrastructure subcontract it had awarded in Iraq, is part of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) rebuilding and reconstruction efforts. Earlier this year, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded Bechtel a contract to design, rehabilitate, upgrade and reconstruct Iraq’s infrastructure, including emergency work on the country’s communications system. Under the subcontract, Lucent will provide 13 central switches, advanced optical transport technology and network management systems designed for voice and high-speed data transmissions. Bechtel said it would work with Lucent Worldwide Services, the Iraqi Telephone & Post Co. (ITPC) and local Iraqi contractors to install and deploy the switching units to restore service on 240,000 of 540,000 telephone lines within ITPC’s network serving Baghdad and the region around it. Before the conflict, 1.1 million Iraqis subscribed to ITPC’s landline telephone service. Lucent also said it would establish an aggressive program to train Iraqi personnel to enable the transition of network operations to ITPC. “The training programs will facilitate critical knowledge transfer to ensure a successful implementation and management of the network,” it said. Deployment is scheduled to begin next month.