Supplemental Work Within Scope of Work -- Internet and Internet 2 Service

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Eastern Region Acquisitions Division-Kansas City office intends to modify contract WC133R-08-SE-4913, on a sole source basis, under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b)(1), with Merit Network Inc for supplemental services within the scope of work for Internet and Internet-2 services at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) Lake Michigan Field Station in Muskegon, MI. A sources sought notice was posted to FedBizOpps on November 10, 2010 and closed on November 22, 2010. No responses were received. The original statement of work includes bandwidth and access fees for Internet and Internet-2 services for GLERL in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The bandwidth for the Lake Michigan Field Station will be aggregated from the wide area network provided by Merit Network Inc at the GLERL main facility in Ann Arbor, MI. The supplemental work is for the additional attachment from Merit Network Inc to the Lake Michigan Field Station and the annual access fee. Internet and Internet-2 network connectivity is an essential service required by the GLERL Ann Arbor Facility and Lake Michigan Field Station for data acquisition, communications and research. Merit Network Inc is the only known provider in Michigan for access to Internet-2, the high-speed research network that many educational institutions and NOAA research laboratories utilize for essential data transfer. Merit Network Inc. is a not-for-profit organization of nine Michigan universities and is responsible for the management of the National Science Foundation Network (NSF) backbone service under a continuing cooperative agreement with NSF. GLERL recently increased network bandwidth to support high-speed Gigabit Internet access at its Ann Arbor facility. This required a dedicated fiber optic communications infrastructure from GLERL's Ann Arbor facility to the Internet and Internet-2 backbone within the Merit Network, Network Operations Center located several miles distant.