iiNet wins Tasmanian govt internet contract

iiNet has won a two-year contract to supply internet access to most of the Tasmanian public service as part of the state government’s Networking Tasmania III (NTIII) program.

The contract was awarded this week after the state government issued a request for tender for connection services in March this year.

Aside from covering most Tasmanian government departments and agencies apart from the Education department, the contract also covers internet access for 36 non-state customers, including local councils.

The deal will require iiNet to lay fibre optic links to connect its Hobart data centre with the Tasmanian Government’s core IP network.

The contract is the first to be awarded under the NTIII program, which is using whole-of-government contracts to allow government agencies to move the majority of government data to secure, outsourced on-island data centres.

NTIII also aims to deliver single sign-on for government employees, an overhaul of the state’s security policy, and a proposed transition to IPv6 by May 2016.

The Tasmanian government expects to issue five main contracts in total under NTIII, with the potential for some elements to be divided into additional contacts. The entire migration is anticipated to be complete by the end of 2018.

“Under the contract, the government will be able to increase capacity while still making substantial savings,” Tasmania's IT minister Michael Ferguson said in a statement.

Public service communications service contracts were first aggregated by the Tasmanian state government in 1997 under the first iteration of Networking Tasmania (NT), which were subsequently refreshed under NTII in 2006.

Under the previous NTII arrangements, Telstra managed the core IP network, with AARNet, iiNet, TasmaNet and Anittel providing internet carriage, network connection services and data centre facilities.

While it is unclear how many employees will eventually be connected through NTIII services, the previous NTII arrangements included 900 fixed connection services to customer sites and 5500 remote access and mobile connection services across Tasmania’s 27,000 core agency staff.