Request for Quotations (RFQ) for 100MBPS Internet service for US Embassy Tbilisi WRAIR Office.

I. Scope of Work The purpose of this firm fixed price purchase order is to obtain 100Mbps, Internet Services, and Circuitry for the U.S. Embassy Tbilisi, Georgia. The local Telecommunication’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) contracting firm must provide internet services and dedicated leased line channels and circuitry for connecting American Embassy Tbilisi data links as shown below in this technical paper. This is the list of required services: SERVICE: OpenNet-VPN NAME: ISP-Internet 100Mbps access for WRAIR at 29 Georgian American Friendship ave. Tbilisi Georgia. One (1) dedicated Internet channel at minimum 100Mbps providing 4 useable IPV4 and IPV6 ip addresses.) at the U.S. Embassy Tbilisi. Description: One (1) dedicated Internet channel at minimum 100Mbps with four useable IPV4 and IPV6 useable ip addresses. Type of Service: Dedicated Internet Channel Location: 29 Georgian American Friendship ave. Tbilisi, Georgia The provided Internet Service must comply with the following requirements: Internet Services Quality. Internet Service Provider (ISP) must provide dedicated leased channel high-speed access to the Internet; data transport media must be fiber optic. Twenty-four (24) hours uplink. Post Internet Service Provider (ISP) connection must be "always on", and must not require the installation of any custom software on the client side. Internet Service Provider (ISP) digital bandwidth is the amount or volume of data that may be sent through the channel, measured in kilobits per second (Kbps), without distortion. Required Bandwidth connection is defined in service description. For Internet Services the Internet Service Provider (ISP) must guarantee full contracted bandwidth availability 24X7X365 from the originator side to the ISP’s internet gateway. Bandwidth sharing between other non-Embassy customers is not allowed. Connection Ratio must be 1/1. Internet Service or data service transmission from the originating information server towards an end server is referred to as downstream; and a transmission from an end user towards the remote server is referred as upstream; Post Internet Service Provider (ISP) Contention Ratio (downstream / upstream) must be 1:1 /1:1. Internet Service Provider (ISP) must provide excellent Quality of Service (QOS) for the connection, that represents the level of consistent download capacity provided, must be the higher QOS percentage possible but, at minimum, greater than 99.97% or the highest possible quality of service connection reaching 100%. Internet Service Provider (ISP) Round Trip Time (RTT) reports the total time in milliseconds (ms) time to send a small data packet and obtain a reply back; must be the faster than 100ms for the Round Trip Time (RTT) for internet service. Also, RTT must be faster than 7ms for local data services (for instance: point-to-point channels or web pages accessed through Georgia’s Network Access Point (NAP). Internet Service Provider (ISP) must permit the transit of all Internet Protocol (IP) protocols (especially IPSec), all User Datagram Protocol (UDP) protocols, and all Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) protocol. Filters or sniffers must not be established, connected, or introduced by the ISP for any Embassy channels. If there are any existing filters, sniffers, restrictions, or proxies, they must be identified, and removed prior lease line circuit installation. Internet Service Provider (ISP) must provide detailed network topology map that shows all possible paths ISP use for the internet traffic between ISP hub in Tbilisi, Georgia and the ISP hub in United States of America (USA). Internet Service Provider (ISP) must have redundancy in the Internet backbone between Georgia and USA. For instance, if NAP of the host country’s backbone fails, NAP Americas, NAP Sprint, or any other alternate backbone paths shall be available. Internet Service Provider (ISP) must provide separate fault-tolerance Fiber Optic connectivity at minimum 10,240 Kbps to the very end at the U.S. Embassy Tbilisi compound Telecommunications Service Entrance Facilities (TSEF) Room (DMARC) from different location using different trench. Network Identification. Internet Service Provider (ISP) must provide a block of one hundred and twenty eight (128) public internet IP addresses on a single subnet for Internet services. Network Devices. The network devices shall comply with the following characteristics: Services provided by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) must be delivered with RJ-45 interface connectors with a 10/000baseT interface. Internet Service Provider (ISP) must provide routers and Data media converters or transmission devices in all cases. Power standard sources must be dual voltage (110v/60hz and 220v/50hz) Devices must be rack-mountable in a standard Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) rack. The providers onsite equipment must not be from a wholly owned Chinese company such as Huawei. The preference is that onsite equipment will be Cisco. Service Support and contingencies. The awarded ISP must warrant service support 7X24X365. The vendor must warrant service support on site if necessary 7X24X365, services must be coordinated directly with Embassy’s Contracting Office Representative (COR) or Information Technology (IT) representative from the Embassy Information Systems Center (ISC). Expected service availability and reliability must be at minimum 99.97%. The awarded vendor must install a redundant Fiber Optic infrastructure known as backup line at minimum 10,240 Kbps with channel state inspection mechanism, in order to verify service connectivity and provide immediate lease line backup connectivity services to the Embassy. The awarded ISP must have direct connection capability with major USA or European telecommunication providers (ISPs) at Internet tier 1 level, having alternative line channels or backups in case of main Internet path malfunctioning. The awarded ISP must provide on line web access data traffic analysis graphs capabilities. Graphs must be updated on a daily basis. Graphs must retain traffic history behavior for at least one year. The awarded ISP must provide a central Information Technology (IT) point of contact (POC) in order to promptly coordinate technical issues during the initial installation process. II. General: The Department of State has a requirement for one full period, full duplex, clear channels, digital circuits and Internet leased lines capable of supporting synchronous traffic. For clear channel circuits, they shall be completely transparent, with no bits added to or deleted from the bit stream provided to the interface of the Department of State equipment. The circuit shall be supplied for the transmission of a multiplexed aggregate bit stream for telegraphic and data signals. The Department of State reserves the right to increase or decrease this digital circuit bandwidth requirement from no less than 10Mbps and up to 50 Mb within 30 days written notice to the contractor. The desired intervals for circuit bandwidth are as follows: 1Mb, 2Mb, 4Mb, 6Mb, 8Mb, 10Mb, and 50Mb. The contractor is to provide fractional T-1 fixed cost pricing for this increase or decrease of digital service. The availability of this circuit shall not be less than 99.5 percent per month over the period of the contract. B. These digital services shall be via Optic Fiber. The service shall be for the exclusive use of the Department of State, 24-hours per day, 7 days per week, and 52 weeks per year. C. The Contractor shall coordinate the service and shall be responsible for the technical sufficiency of the circuit, including services necessary to establish, operate, and restore the circuit. Except terminal equipment furnished by the Government, the Contractor shall provide all equipment, materials, and supplies required to provide the service which includes the Data Service Unit (DSU) configured with Data Communications Equipment (DCE) interface. If required, signal element timing shall be provided by the contractor’s facility. D. The Contractor shall provide sufficient technical support to ensure uninterrupted end-to-end service between such terminal points as are covered in this contract. The Contractor shall provide, properly adjust, and maintain the circuit for continuous Department of State use. The Contractor shall ensure that the circuit complies with service changes, additions, or deletions as required under this contract. E. The Contractor shall supply all the necessary media converters. F. Services. This is a firm fixed-price contract for the lease of one full period, full duplex, clear channels, digital circuits and internet leased lines capable of supporting synchronous traffic. For the clear channel circuits, they shall be completely transparent to 88,536 Kbps data or different if specified on the service requirements, with no bits added to or deleted from the bit stream provided to the interface of the Department of State equipment. G. Bit Error Rate Test (BERT) The bit error rate (BER) for the service shall not be greater than 1 in 10 to the 6 bits for 99.7% of the time, for all time. H. Acceptable Level of Performance. The Standard of Performance (SP) for this contract is 99.7% percent availability per month (100 percent less 0.3 percent each month for corrective and preventive maintenance). I. Inspection and Acceptance. Unless specified in the Contract, the Government shall require a period not to exceed 24 hours in order to perform testing to determine acceptance of the required circuit under Section C. The U.S. destination point or the U.S. foreign post shall conduct the testing. J. Term of Contract: The required circuits shall be installed and delivered to the Destination Point on or before 60 Days after Contract Award. Upon successful installation and acceptance by the Government of the required circuit under Section C, the contractor shall be provided, in writing, notice to proceed and shall provide contractual services for a twelve (12) month period, commencing on the date specified in the notice to proceed. K. The Contractor agrees that the work and services set forth in this contract shall be performed during the period commencing the effective date of this contract and shall continue through the end of the twelve month period of service, excluding the exercise of any option. L. An Invoice, suitable for payment, shall contain, but not limited to, the following information: 1 Name of Contractor; 2 Date of Invoice; 3 Original Invoice Number (Consecutive numbers); 4 Contract number; 5 Task or Delivery Order number, as applicable; 6 Government Specific Accounting and Appropriation Data (Funding Cite.) (example: 19X0113-2015-X75041-180100-5327-2332); 7 Contract Line Item Number (CLIN) of item or service provided; 8 Description of the item, or service actually provided; 9 Period of performance of service or date item is provided; 10 Block/Space reserved for COR acceptance signature and date; 11 Signature, Name and Phone number of Company representative authorized to sign invoices; 12 Remit to address 13 Name, phone number and mailing address to whom any disputed invoices should be addressed; 14 Credits with explanation and period covered. Failure to submit invoices which do not identify this information shall be returned without payment to the Contractor for correction. M. The circuit described above is exempt, under Article 34 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, from the Special Access Surcharges or foreign taxes, including Value Added Taxes. N. Authorized Instruction to Contractor a. No person or agency other than the Contracting Officer (CO) is authorized to give instruction, orders or directions on behalf of the Government to the Contractor or his employees, unless such person or agency is authorized in writing by the CO to so act. The authority of such person or agency is strictly limited to the written authorization provided by the CO. The duty is upon the Contractor to determine the authority of such person or agency. Any questions regarding the authority of such person or agency should be directed to the CO in writing. b. Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR): The CO may designate and authorize a representative(s) to act on his/her behalf under this contract. Such representative(s) as may be appointed shall be designated by a letter from the CO and a copy of the letter shall be given to the Contractor. The COR shall represent the CO as specified in his/her delegation of authority letter. The COR shall not be authorized to issue change orders or adjustments. Changes in the Scope of Work/Specifications or any increase or decrease in the work called for by this contract shall be made by the CO by an executed modification to this contract. O. Government‑Furnished Equipment (GFE): Terminal equipment at DMARC P. Release of Information. Contractor’s organization shall clear with the Information Office listed below any public release of information on this contract. This information includes news stories, articles, sales literature, advertisements, radio-TV spots, etc. 2. The request for public release of information should be addressed to: Contracting Officer, US Embassy Tbilisi, 11 George Balanchine St. Tbilisi, Georgia. 3. Limited Use of Data and Information. Performance of this contract may require the contractor to access and use data and information proprietary to the Government agency or agency personnel, or which is of such a nature that its dissemination or use, other than in performance of this contract would be adverse to the interests of the Government or others. The Contractor and Contractor personnel shall not divulge or release data or information developed or obtained in performance of this contract, until made public by the Government, except to authorized Government personnel or upon written approval of the Contracting Officer. The Contractor will not use, disclose, or reproduce proprietary data which bears a restrictive legend, other than as required in the performance of this contract. Nothing herein shall preclude the use of any data independently acquired by the Contractor without such limitations or prohibit an agreement at no costs to the Government between the Contractor and the data owner provides for greater rights to the Contractor. Q. Circuit Downtime and Credits Credits shall be assessed against the Contractor in those instances where the circuit during any given month or year that fail to achieve and sustain the minimum acceptance standards stated above. 1. Definitions: Circuit Availability Acceptance Level: Yearly Circuit Availability Acceptance Level is computed by 365 calendar days times 24 (hours per day) times 99.7% acceptance level equals 8,733.72 hours annum. (365 x 24 = 8760 x 99.7% = 8,733.72). Monthly Circuit Availability is computed by the calendar days per month times 24 (hours per day) times 99.7% acceptance level (example: 31 x 24 = 744 x 99.7% = 741.76). Downtime: That period of time when the circuit becomes non-operational or unusable for communication or transfer of data or failures to meet the minimum acceptance standards. The maximum cumulative Annual downtime that shall be acceptable for corrective or preventative maintenance is 26.28 hours (8760 x .3%). The maximum cumulative Monthly downtime that shall be acceptable for corrective or preventative maintenance shall be .3% of the total available hours for the month (example: 31 x 24 = 744 x .3% = 2.23 hours). Period of Downtime: Downtime shall commence at the time first attempt for contact is made by the Government (or its representative) to the Contractor’s Point of Contact and shall be annotated on the Remedy Ticket and shall continue until the circuit is returned into Service by the Government. Downtime Credits: Monetary value returned to the Government for failure to meet the Circuit availability requirements. Downtime Credits shall be assessed based on cumulative downtime time with the minimum assessment being one hour. Downtime credit shall be equal to the hourly or daily rate (as applicable) as identified in the schedule in Section B. There are two (2) situations when circuit Downtime Credits can be accumulated: 1) Below Availability Level, 2) Extended Downtime. 2. Credit for Circuit Downtime by Situation Below Availability Level: If the downtime accumulated for a circuit adds up to 26.28 (8760 x 0.3%) cumulative hours or more during any one contract year (365 calendar days) or depending on the number of hours for the month (example 744 x .3%) cumulative hours per month (example: 31 calendar day month) the Contractor shall grant a hourly credit to the Government for each hour of downtime. Each additional one hour increment or portion thereof will be assessed as an additional hour. Extended Downtime Credit(s): Cumulative time of more than 18 hours but not greater than 24 hours for any one outage shall be assessed at a daily rate. Any increment of 24 hours beyond the initial 24 hours of any one outage shall be assessed at the standards for the hourly rate up to 12 hours, however between 12 and 24 hours the credit shall be assessed at the daily rate. 3. Exceptions to Cumulating of Downtime Cumulating of circuit downtime shall include all unscheduled downtime deemed to be the responsibility of the Contractor, with the following exceptions: a. When the failure to perform arises out of causes beyond the control and without the fault or negligence of the Contractor or Sub-contractor as defined in the Termination for Default clause in Section I of this contract. b. Malfunction of equipment, frequency fading and interference, errors of comission and/or omission by the Contractor or Sub-contractor, and commercial power surges or failures are considered to be normal hazards of the industry and therefore do not qualify as causes beyond the control of the Contractor or Sub-contractor. The Contractor shall be charged with credits for all reported outages determined “no trouble found” or “came clear while testing” but which exceed 45 minutes. The Contracting Officer shall make final determination as to whether downtime is the responsibility of the Contractor. If requested by the Contracting Officer, the Contractor shall provide documentation to support claims of excusable downtime. For downtime determined to be the Contractor’s responsibility, the Contracting Officer may elect to assess a credit for each instance of non-performance. 4. Payment Reduction for Downtime Credits When Circuit Downtime credit(s) is owed to the Government, the total number of creditable hours shall be accumulated for the month and will be deducted from the payment due the Contractor in the month they accrued. 5. Technological Refreshment After contract award, the Government may; pursuant to FAR clause 52.212-4 - Contract Terms and Conditions –Commercial Items, paragraph (c), Changes; request changes within the scope of the contract. These changes may be required to improve performance or react to changes in technology. The Contractor may propose for the Government’s technological refreshment, substitutions or additions for any provided products or services that may become available as a result of technological improvements. The Government may, at any time during the term of this contract or any extensions thereof, modify the contract to acquire products which are similar to those under the contract and that the Contractor has, or has not, formally announced for marketing purposes. This action is considered to be within the scope of the contract. At the option of the Government, a demonstration of the substitute product may be required. The Government is under no obligation to modify the contract in response to the proposed additions or substitutions. Such substitutions or additions may include any part of, or all of, a given product(s) provided that the following conditions are met and substantiated by documentation in the technological refreshment proposal: a. The proposed product(s) shall meet all of the technical specifications of this document and conform to the terms and conditions cited in the contract. b. The proposed product(s) shall have the capacity, performance, or functional characteristics equal to or greater than, the current product(s). c. The proposal shall discuss the impact on hardware, services, and delivery schedules. The cost of the changes not specifically addressed in the proposal shall be borne entirely by the Contractor. d. Contractor has the right to withdraw, in whole or in part, any technological refreshment proposal prior to acceptance by the Government. Contractor will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that prices for substitutions or additions are comparable to replaced or discontinued products. If a technological refreshment proposal is accepted and made a part of this contract, an equitable adjustment, increasing or decreasing the contract price, may be required and any other affected provisions of this contract shall be made in accordance with FAR clause 52.212-4, paragraph (c), Changes, and other applicable clauses of the contract. 6. QUALITY ASSURANCE AND SURVEILLANCE PLAN (QASP) This plan provides an effective method to promote satisfactory contractor performance. The QASP provides a method for the Contracting Officer's Representative (COR) to monitor Contractor performance, advise the Contractor of unsatisfactory performance, and notify the Contracting Officer of continued unsatisfactory performance. The Contractor, not the Government, is responsible for management and quality control to meet the terms of the contract. The role of the Government is to monitor quality to ensure that contract standards are achieved.