A U.S.-based division of Nortel said it landed the contract to replace the U.S. Social Security Administration's phone system with what is believed to be the world's largest VoIP implementation. Nortel Government Solutions of Fairfax, Va., was awarded a $300 million, 10-year contract for the SSA's Telephone Systems Replacement Project encompassing 1,600 field offices and a 55,000-agent contact center. The project is being undertaken to handle all the baby boomers hitting retirement age in the coming decade.

NGS is a subcontractor on the $20 million Pentagon VoIP makeover, awarded to General Dynamics in March. General Dynamics in turn will be on the SSA project team, along with Black Box Network Services, Shared Technologies, AT&T, York Telecom, High Wire Networks, NetIQ and Pal-Tech. NGS, a division of Toronto, Ontario-based Nortel, will lead the project. Nortel, last year, was contracted by The New York Times to install a 3,000-plus phone VoIP system at the paper's new Times Square headquarters.

That the Pentagon, the federal government and New York's newspaper of record are confident in VoIP security systems can only portend more massive projects to come.

For more:
- Nortel's press release is here

Related Articles:
Pentagon phone system to go VoIP Report