THE PURPOSE OF THIS SPECIAL NOTICE IS TO PROVIDE A RESPONSE TO THE QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY THE CONTRACTORS IN REGARD TO SOLICITATION, REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) NO. HE1260-05-R-0022 (INTERNET PROVIDER SERVICES). THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ARE PROVIDED: Question: Can you clarify your request for 100M + 10M IP speed? Are you asking for two separate IP ports or one single IP port? Answer: All locations in Okinawa are inter-connected via a layer two network at 100Mbps and share a 10Mbps connection to the Internet. Question: Can you clarify your request for 1.5M x 2 speed? Are you asking for 2 separate 1.5M IP ports or one single 3M IP port? Answer: 1.5M x 2 = a requirement for 3 Mbps. It is up to the contractor to determine how they provide this. Question: Am I correct in assuming that we need to price out all speeds in TE-1, as well as the primary pricing schedule on pages 5-14? Answer: You are required to price out all the speeds listed in Section II, Schedule - Section B, as amended by Amendment No. 0001. Question: Can you please confirm your service delivery date(s)? Answer: We require service to commence on October 1, 2005. Question: Am I correct that you have no address information other than what has been provided in the RFP? Some of our subcontractors are asking for address information. Answer: We cannot provide any more explicit address information than was included in the RPP because, to our knowledge, it does not exist. Question: Can DoDDS-P give Sprint a word document for all pricing sheets to be priced, the contractual information, i.e. Reps and Certs, and Past Performance Survey, so Sprint and our past performance references can fill this information in? We currently can not do this with the Adobe format. Answer: The information has been provided to the contractor on the week of 4 July 2005. Question: Sprint is formally asking for at least a two week extension to the due date based on the required time to formulate a complete solution with valid and accurate pricing. Can an extension be granted? Answer: Based on Amendment No. 0001, the solicitation was extended from 21 July 2005 to 28 July 2005. At this time, this is the only extension that will be provided. Question: How many static IP addresses do you require at each site? Sprint realizes that DoDDS-P is requesting a full class C range, but is such a large range needed for a DoD school. Can we have clarification on this? Answer: DoDDS-P requires a full class C network for each Service Delivery Point. Question: Could you provide the building number and room number for the service delivery point at each base/site in Japan/Okinawa? Sprint needs to confirm that there is already fiber installed into each site. Can you confirm this? If the site does not have fiber installed, could you confirm whether there is on-base fiber currently available for use from the standard carrier demarc point to the SDP? Answer: It is up to the prospective contractor to determine the availability and termination point of local loop fiber for each base. Question: What CISCO models and IOS version do you intend to use at each site? Answer: DoDDS-P provided a list of interface part numbers in a Technical Exhibit. Question: Will you use BGP? Answer: The Performance Work Statement specifically states that DoDDS-P does not intend to participate in or exchange dynamic routing information with the contractor. Question: Technical Exhibits 1 and 2 both list each location but no physical addresses. Looked at the web sites for each school and district office, which all have military post address listed. But we need to get the physical addresses of the termination points i.e. where we connect to the campus network router. Do you have a list of the point of presence addresses we can use? Answer: The installation locations are listed in the Service Delivery Point exhibit by city, and prefecture in the case of Mainland Japan. There are no physical addresses. Question: Can you share with us the list of PSTN's or local carriers that have agreements with each location? For example here in Guam GTA is the local carrier that has the interconnection agreement to Andersen AFB. These being the carriers we need to contact to arrange local loops to your facilities. Answer: We cannot provide a list of local carriers that have agreements with the installations. Question: Interested in the expected award date, award notification and the date the provider will be empowered to proceed. Depending on each local carrier requirements for engineering and installing the local loops, this process can take 45 to 60 days. From the attached schedule the go live date is October 1, realistic expectations of ordering local loops would be the first week of August, 2005. Smart transition planning requires parallel circuits with a pre-testing period before cut over to the new service. This is in regards to our planning and developing our quote and expedite costs will increase the NRC. Answer: We need this service to start on October 1, 2005. Question: This question is two parts concerning Performance Requirements. QASP 3, Access Service Latency - 95% of the time natural round trip latency of a given access speed. To what destination round trip will be polled, open Internet to US destination, regional Internet or between the schools? More detail of your concerns and expectations would be helpful. QASP 4, Transport Service Latency - 90% of the time no more than 100ms roundtrip latency between any two contractor Points of Presence within each geographic area. Can you share with us more detail on the geographic area sizes? We monitor our dedicated network closely to ensure traffic flows at subscribed data rates, but public Internet connectivity can be erratic. So if you can describe your functional needs, i.e. VPN, Video Conferencing or and the associated geographical areas, we can then engineer a network design that will better suit your needs. Answer: a.) Access Service is the portion of the service between the Service Delivery Point (SDP) and the contractor's next hop router (first upstream). b.) Transport Service Latency is a measure of the time it takes a packet to travel between any two of the contractor's next hop routers supporting any of the SDP's. We consider Guam, Okinawa, Mainland Japan, and South Korea to be the boundaries of the four geographic areas. If the Geographic size of the areas is relevant to the contractor, we believe the list of installation locations provided in the Service Delivery Point exhibit is enough information for them to deduce it from. Question: I would like to request an extension of two weeks for the due date for this RFP. Sprint needs site addresses and phone exchanges to ensure that each site is properly priced. Can you please advise me of when I can get this information? Answer: There are no street addresses. The locations are US Military bases. This was clearly stated in the PWS. The installation locations were listed by city in Technical Exhibit 1. I have included a list of commercial telephone number prefixes associated with each of the installations, information that is readily available on the internet.
