TheStreet.Com mentions BKHM:
Cody mentioned BKHM favorably last night in his newsletter.
Send in the Air Force
And while these deals are all exciting (and provide more evidence of how clueless the current
expectations for fiber optics are), the real news this week was that the Air Force has finally issued
the final request for proposals (RFP) for its Network-Centric Solutions (Netcents for short). You can
see the RFP for yourself at web1.ssg.gunter.af.mil.
The deal should be worth about $9 billion over the next five years. (Not bad, eh?) But more than
likely that’s just the beginning, and Netcents will be worth many more billions over the next decade.
The contracts from the RFP are expected to be awarded in late September, but because this is a
government deal, I suspect the actual award date will be delayed a couple of times and the contract
winners will be named near the end of this year.
The Air Force will be awarding contracts to build out and upgrade its networks and connectivity with
the latest, greatest and most secure technologies. The $9 billion deal will cover voice-over-Internet
protocol (VoIP), Gigabit Ethernet connectivity and a lot of fiber-optic network building. The RFP lists
Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq), Nortel (NT:NYSE), Enterasys (ETS:NYSE), Marconi (MRCIY:Nasdaq),
Alcatel, Ciena (CIEN:Nasdaq), Fujitsu (FJTSY: NQB), Finisar (FNSR:Nasdaq), Corning
(GLW:NYSE) and a host of others as current Air Force network suppliers.
But the competition for this contract is wide open and will be sought from all kinds of suppliers.
That said, Nortel is the clearest front-runner at this point for most of the voice and some of the
other major sections of the contract. That means, of course, Nortel’s suppliers, like AudioCodes
(AUDC:Nasdaq) for VoIP and Bookham (BKHM:Nasdaq) for fiber optics, are also in a very sweet
spot. I’d look for Sycamore (SCMR:Nasdaq), Juniper (JNPR:Nasdaq), Cisco, Ciena, Foundry
(FDRY:Nasdaq) and Extreme (EXTR:Nasdaq) to pursue this deal aggressively, too. Sycamore,
especially, could use another government contract win. |
