Service Support and Contingencies
ISP must warrant service support 7X24X365.
ISP must warrant service support on site if necessary 7X24X365, services must be coordinated directly with Embassy’s Contracting Office Representative (COR) or Information Technology (IT) representative from the Embassy Information Systems Center (ISC).
ISP should have direct connection capability with major United States of America (U.S.A) telecommunication providers (ISPs) at Internet tier 1 level, having alternative line channels or backups in case of main Internet path malfunctioning, if local conditions permit.
ISP must provide a central Information Technology (IT) point of contact (POC) in order to promptly coordinate technical issues during the initial installation process.
Network Identification
Internet Service Provider (ISP) must provide 2 number of public IP Addresses.
II. General:The objective is to provide a dedicated Internet connection with the requirement for high-speed, terrestrial link, low-latency, and stable Internet connection. The latency should be less than 600ms between DCR and well known North American search sites such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. The bandwidth will be DEDICATED (not shared) to the main backbone and a proposal on at least 10 Mbps download speed and 10 Mbps upload speed including but not limited to applications accessing remote databases abroad, Internet surfing, VPN, Network mail, distance learning, online meeting for DCR located at Tayouah, Commune de Ratoma -Conakry, Republic of Guinea.
Under the direction of the Systems Manager who is the designated Contracting Officer Representative (COR) for this activity, the contractor shall undertake all tasks as spelt out in this statement of work.The contractor shall seek to understand the current infrastructure installed at the CMR and DCMR by carrying out a site survey. The residences are located at Tayouah and Miniere, Commune de Ratoma -dixin Conakry, Republic of Guinea.Due to the critical nature of the applications that are operated through this Internet link the contractor shall be required to always ensure availability of this service. Any interruptions or service degradation below EMBASSY/GUINEA’s expectations will result in the loss of the subscription fees commensurate with the duration that the service was unavailable or when the service quality was unacceptable to EMBASSY/GUINEA.
The contractor shall ensure that there is twenty-four-hour technical coverage of service support and should therefore be operating a 24 X 7 support center. The contractor shall provide all required hardware, IP addresses, telecommunications applications and/or software upgrades including any licenses that may be required to keep the service operational after the service has been commissioned.
After the service has been commissioned the contractor shall bear all installation costs that may be required to keep the quality of the service acceptable to EMBASSY/GUINEA. Further, the contractor will be responsible for additional costs arising from technical modifications, change of Internet provisioning technologies or change in agreements of the contractor and its partners.
B. Required Bandwidth
The requirement is for high-speed, terrestrial link, low-latency, and stable Internet connection. The latency should be less than 200ms between DCR and well known North American search sites such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. The bandwidth will be DEDICATED (not shared) to the main backbone and a proposal on at least 10 Mbps download speed and 10 Mbps upload speed.
Note that the bandwidth shall be dedicated.
C. Deliverables
The contractor shall provide the required bulk Internet Service through industry standard telecommunications channel equipment whose operation meets approved local telecommunication regulatory requirements.
The contractor shall provide blocks of IP addresses on two different subnets in which a request of subnet /28 blocks of IP's break into two smaller subnets. One will be used between the ISP and DCR Pop router. The second subnet will be used between DCR router and DCR Firewalls.
The contractor shall provide all documentation for the installed infrastructure including but not limited to network numbers, passwords, and configurations. In addition, the contractor shall provide any test tools that may include hardware or software components. Logon account details for monitoring of critical devices or monitoring of connection speeds.
The contractor shall be registered and approved Internet Service Provider by the local Telecommunication Regulatory Authority.
ADS Chapter 302, section 302.3.6.14, FAR Part 4.2101 Prohibition on Covered Telecommunications and Video Surveillance Services and Equipment provides policy and procedures for addressing offers and awards where the offeror/contractor has represented that it uses covered products/services prohibited by FAR 4.21. This mandatory reference supplements ADS Chapter 302 policy and procedures and provides agency procedures for waiver approvals as authorized by FAR 4.2104.
Public Law (P.L.) 115-232 went into effect prohibiting Federal agencies from using video surveillance and telecommunications products or services from Huawei Technologies. In compliance with this law, M/CIO is working to identify where Huawei is used throughout the Agency. Because some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use Huawei products in their infrastructure, M/CIO is also asking about Mission ISPs that use Huawei components.
The contractor shall provide contact details and qualifications of all personnel who will carry out the installation as well as the shift engineers who operate their 24 X 7 network operations center.
The contractor shall service and test any back up communications link at the contractor’s costs including any access circuit charges that may be necessary for the provision of this service and shall provide service level agreement (SLA) if available.
For Internet Services the Internet Service Provider (ISP) must guarantee full contracted bandwidth availability 24X7X365 from the originator side to the ISP’s internet gateway. Bandwidth sharing between other non-Embassy customers is not allowed. Connection Ratio must be 1/1.
The contractor shall provide excellent Quality of Service (QOS) for the connection, that represents the level of consistent download capacity provided, must be the higher QOS percentage possible but, at minimum, greater than 99.97% or the highest possible quality of service connection reaching 100%.
The contractor Round Trip Time (RTT) reports the total time in milliseconds (ms) time to send a small data packet and obtain a reply must be faster than 600ms for the Round-Trip Time (RTT) for internet service.
The contractor shall provide a detailed network topology map that shows all possible paths ISP uses for the internet traffic between the ISP hub in Conakry and the ISP hub in the United States of America (USA).
The contractor shall have redundancy in the Internet backbone between Guinea and the USA. For instance, If NAP of the host country’s backbone fails, NAP Americas, NAP Sprint, or any other alternate backbone paths shall be available.
D. Warranty
The contractor shall provide a twelve-month warranty for any new equipment supplied under this contract. The warranty shall cover maintenance, repair and/or replacement of any failing aspects of the new components of this installation.
E. Delivery
The DCR’s COR in charge of this activity will receive, inspect, and certify any equipment including documentation, configurations, and copies of all software.
