I fear it will mostly consist of lots and lots of duct tape. Justin On Fri, 23 May 2003, Alexandra Kubis wrote:

This was burried on CNN:

http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/22/news/companies/worldcom_probe.reut/index.htm

... How WorldCom....err.. MCI plans to fix a ~12$ billion dollar hole with a 45$ million plug is beyond me.

-AK

----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher L. Morrow" <chris@UU.NET> To: <listuser@numbnuts.net> Cc: "Mike Tancsa" <mike@sentex.net>; <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 3:59 PM Subject: Re: NPR morning news apparently just reported...

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On Fri, 23 May 2003 listuser@numbnuts.net wrote:

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On Fri, 23 May 2003, Mike Tancsa wrote:

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A government contract handed out not on technical merit, but for back

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political reasons ? Shocking!

---Mike

At 01:33 PM 23/05/2003 -0700, Bill Woodcock wrote:

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> According to this article, yes they were involved with > AWCC: > http://www.afghanwireless.com/news_6apr.html

Ouch. If they were responsible for AWCC, that would hardly seem to

be a

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basis for awarding them another similar contract.

The funny this is at the state agencies I've worked for we were *required* to go through a bidding procedure prior to getting final approval for a purchase. Unless we had an established relationship with a given company for similar products or services we had to follow the procedures. I wouldn't at all be surprised to hear that sometime in the very near future a lawsuit was filed by various other telcos to try and get a piece of

room the

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pie or get the administration to be fair towards other telcos. Who says it has to be a US telco? Why can't it be a UK telco?

please note I'm not a business guy, nor do I know anything directly about this case... BUT, perhaps the contract was awarded on/with the FTS200X contract? (its 2002 now I believe that WCOM/MCI is the prime on... or atleast heavily related too) That would mean the gov't had a vehicle to just create a task order to make the network buildout happen... As to 'why a us company', perhaps its being done under the auspices of: "The us gov't needs a phone network in iraq while they are there, so build something good and leave it behind, as a bonus to the luckyiraq people?"

(and not again the initial paragraph from me... add to that: I didn't read either of these articles)