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Item
Title: Two-year Agreement with BellSouth
Long Distance to Provide Both Long Distance Service and Dedicated Circuit
Services
Specific Action Requested:
That the Board
of Commissioners approve a two-year agreement with BellSouth Long Distance to
provide long distance and dedicated circuit services for all County office
telephones and a dedicated circuit between the County’s disaster recovery
emergency site located in the Swinburne building and the County’s off-site
disaster recovery vendor’s facility in Charlotte. Authorize the County Manager
to execute a contract on behalf of Wake County for these services.
Item
Summary:
In 2003 Wake County investigated options for reducing long
distance service costs for County office telephones. It was determined that
costs could be reduced by switching from the incumbent carrier, AT&T, to
BellSouth Long Distance (BSLD) and the County entered into a one-year agreement.
Also in 2003, the County investigated options for the
provision of a dedicated, point-to-point circuit between Raleigh and Charlotte
to provide connectivity between the County’s emergency disaster recovery
facility (coldsite) located in the Swinburne building and the County’s off-site
disaster recovery facility provided by SunGard in Charlotte as part of the
County’s Disaster Recovery (DR) Plan. The circuit will be used to carry data
traffic between the two facilities in the event of a disaster. BSLD was also
chosen as the lowest cost provider for this service and the County signed a
one-year agreement.
Wake County has used BSLD for the past 12 months for both
long distance service and for the dedicated DR circuit and has found the
service and support to be very good.
County staff has negotiated improved pricing for both services and
recommends that the County enter into a two-year agreement that will provide a
39% discount resulting in an estimated annual savings of $6,240 over the
current one-year agreements. Under the proposed agreement the rate per minute
for long distance service will drop from $.10 to $.09 for intrastate calls and
from $.07 to $.05 for interstate calls and the monthly cost for the dedicated
circuit will drop by $520 from $1,702 to $1,182.
Attachments: