SSA Gives AT&T Big Networx Win

The Social Security administration has selected AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) to develop a new contact call center solution under the Networx Universal program.  The contract, which is worth up to $286M, will power the IP based call center and interactive voice response automation underlying the SSA’s national toll free number.  

That toll-free number processes 80 million calls annually, of which 30 million are serviced by IVR automation.  To me that means ‘frustrated the caller into giving up pushing buttons’, but I must admit I’m not impartial on the subject of IVR and I’ve never called the SSA thus far.  The SSA provides the various benefits it oversees via some 1,500 locations nationwide and 66,000 employees.  

Back in August, it was Level 3 picking up an SSA contract via Networx.  But that one was for 10G wavelengths connecting the company’s data centers, and was certainly not worth anything on the scale of this $286M call center deal.  But there are probably additional services needed by the SSA that will be rolled under the Networx umbrella.

It has seemed like years since the Networx contracts were awarded (oh wait, it has!), and yet so little has come from it until recently.

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Categories: Government Regulations · VoIP