Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) Contract Explained

The Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract, known as EIS, is the federal government’s primary vehicle for buying telecommunications and networking services. Managed by the General Services Administration, the $50 billion contract was awarded in July 2017 to ten prime contractors and runs through July 30, 2032, replacing a patchwork of aging telecom agreements that had served federal agencies for over a decade.¹ It covers everything from basic phone lines and internet access to software-defined networking, cloud connectivity, and managed cybersecurity services, making it one of the largest IT procurement vehicles in the federal government.

EIS replaced three main contract families: Networx (in Universal and Enterprise flavors), the Washington Interagency Telecommunications System 3 (WITS 3), and a set of regional Local Service Agreements.² The contract is structured as a multiple-award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract under FAR Part 15, with a base period from July 2017 through July 2022 and two five-year option periods.¹ The $50 billion figure is a ceiling. Actual total spend across all task orders sat at roughly $1.8 billion in early 2024, with cumulative task order awards reaching approximately $26.6 billion across more than 2,060 task orders.

How Agencies Buy Through EIS

Agencies don’t purchase services directly off the master contract. They compete individual task orders among the prime contractors. Under FAR 16.505, every task order exceeding $3,500 must give all awardees a fair opportunity to compete, with limited exceptions.³ Agencies can select a vendor on price alone for simpler fixed-price orders, or use a lowest-price-technically-acceptable or best-value tradeoff approach for more complex work.

Before any solicitation goes out, the ordering contracting officer must obtain a Delegation of Procurement Authority from GSA. Orders above $250,000 require a formal scope review.⁴ Each agency also gets a dedicated solutions broker from GSA, a single point of contact for technical and acquisition questions.

Who Holds the Contract

GSA awarded EIS to ten companies in August 2017: AT&T, BT Federal, CenturyLink (now Lumen Technologies), Core Technologies, Granite Telecommunications, Harris Corp. (now L3Harris), Level 3 Communications (which merged with CenturyLink shortly after the award), Manhattan Telecommunications (MetTel), MicroTech, and Verizon.⁵ Core Technologies and MicroTech are no longer listed as active industry partners, leaving nine contractors on the vehicle.⁶

Most task order dollars have gone to the major carriers. Verizon has secured billion-dollar engagements with the Department of State ($1.58 billion for network modernization across nearly 260 embassy locations), the Department of Defense ($966.5 million across three task orders), the Department of Labor ($887 million), and the FBI (over $400 million).⁷ Lumen Technologies has won a $1.6 billion contract with the Department of the Interior and a $1.2 billion deal with the Department of Agriculture.⁸ MetTel has accumulated over $1.3 billion in task orders across 12 agencies, including a $711 million engagement with the State Department for a hybrid SD-WAN overlay.⁹

What Services EIS Covers

EIS encompasses 39 distinct service offerings spanning traditional telecommunications and modern IT infrastructure.² Core categories include managed network services, virtual private networking, Ethernet transport, internet protocol services, private line services, voice services (IP-based and circuit-switched), wireless and mobility services, toll-free service, and Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Services.¹⁰

GSA designed the contract to add new technologies through contract modifications as they mature. Capabilities added or enabled since the original award include:

SD-WAN as a managed service, letting agencies replace hub-and-spoke network designs with software-controlled architectures. GSA estimates medium-sized agencies can achieve 42% cost avoidance through SD-WAN implementation.¹¹
5G procurement, enabled through updated contract language.²
Low Earth Orbit satellite services for high-speed, low-latency connectivity in remote and emergency settings.¹¹
Cloud connectivity through a cloud service provider connection feature within VPN services, supporting FedRAMP-authorized services and Zero Trust architectures.²
Managed security offerings, including Trusted Internet Connections 3.0, managed prevention, vulnerability scanning, and incident response.¹¹
Network as a Service, currently available as a tailored combination of existing EIS services, with GSA working to further standardize the offering.²

Integrated product teams within GSA assess industry trends and determine whether new capabilities should be added to the contract scope. Post-quantum cryptography is among the technologies GSA is monitoring for potential future integration.

The Transition From Legacy Contracts

Moving hundreds of federal agencies off contracts they had used for years and onto EIS proved to be the program’s defining challenge. GSA originally set an ambitious schedule: agencies were supposed to issue solicitations by March 2019, award task orders by September 2019, and complete their full transition by September 2022.¹²

Almost nobody made those deadlines. A March 2020 GAO report found that 14 of 19 agencies studied had missed the March 2019 solicitation deadline, 18 of 19 missed the September 2019 task order deadline, and 11 of 19 weren’t even planning to meet the September 2022 full-transition target.¹³ GAO cited a familiar set of problems: agencies couldn’t maintain accurate inventories of their existing telecom services, failed to perform strategic requirements analyses, and didn’t dedicate enough resources to the transition.¹⁴

The pandemic made things worse, and GSA extended deadlines multiple times. The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security received extensions to May 2026 due to supply chain disruptions and pandemic setbacks.¹⁵ Eight additional agencies later received the same extension.¹⁶ The final contract expirations are February 28, 2026 for WITS 3 and May 31, 2026 for Networx and local telecom contracts.¹²

As of March 31, 2026, 203 agencies had reported completing their EIS transition: seven large agencies, 24 medium agencies, and 172 small agencies. Completion means 100% of an agency’s legacy service inventory has been disconnected and business volume on the old contracts has reached zero.¹² Some finished only recently: the Government Accountability Office completed its transition in January 2026, and the U.S. Postal Service finished in December 2025.

Oversight and Small Business Requirements

Congress has kept close watch on the transition. In August 2020, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform added EIS transition progress to the FITARA Scorecard, the government’s main IT accountability tool covering 24 major agencies. At that point, only six of 24 agencies reported more than 50% EIS adoption. The highest performers included the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of the Treasury. The lowest included the Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security, and Commerce, along with the Small Business Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, and NASA.¹⁷

GAO issued 25 specific recommendations to five agencies (Commerce, HHS, State, VA, and NASA) to address planning failures. As of mid-2025, the Department of State had closed all five of its recommendations and HHS had closed four of five. The Department of Commerce still had five open, having failed to provide evidence of completed inventory updates or staffing analyses. NASA, despite completing its EIS transition, had not provided documentation to satisfy three of four open recommendations on inventory completeness and resource planning.¹⁴

Large businesses holding EIS contracts valued at $750,000 or more must maintain small business subcontracting plans under FAR 52.219-9.¹⁸ These plans include dollar and percentage goals for subcontracting to small businesses across several socioeconomic categories: small businesses generally, veteran-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned, HUBZone, small disadvantaged, and women-owned firms. Prime contractors are required to make good-faith efforts to use the small businesses identified in their proposals, assist them with solicitation requirements, and give them adequate consideration in make-or-buy decisions.¹⁹ Compliance is tracked through the Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System, with reports due semi-annually and annually.

What Comes After EIS

With EIS set to expire in 2032, GSA has already begun planning a successor. In February 2024, GSA issued a Request for Information under what it calls the Next Generation Network Infrastructure strategy, seeking industry input on telecommunications and IT market trends to shape future acquisition requirements.²⁰ The agency has emphasized that the follow-on vehicle might not be a multiple-award IDIQ and might not carry the same terms and conditions as EIS.

A July 2025 GSA blog post cited Executive Order 14217 (“Ensuring Commercial, Cost-Effective Solutions in Federal Contracts,” signed April 15, 2025) as a guiding principle for the successor.²¹ That order requires agencies to use commercially available products to the maximum extent practicable and imposes a formal justification process for any custom-built, government-unique procurement.²² GSA’s stated goals for the follow-on include reducing reliance on custom builds, improving pricing transparency, simplifying acquisition and ordering, and integrating cloud, WAN, LAN, edge, cellular, and satellite technologies with embedded cybersecurity. Both agencies and industry can send input to EISfollowon@gsa.gov.

1
GSA.gov. Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions Contract Basics
2
Federal News Network. EIS Guide 2024
3
GSA.gov. EIS Fair Opportunity and Ordering Guide
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GSA.gov. EIS How to Order
5
Nextgov. GSA Names 10 Primes for $50B EIS Contract
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GSA.gov. EIS Industry Partners
7
Verizon. Verizon EIS Announcements
8
Lumen Technologies. Lumen Lands $73.6 Million Contract With U.S. Government Accountability Office
9
FedScoop. State Department SD-WAN EIS
10
GSA.gov. EIS Section J Service Categories
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GSA Blogs. SD-WAN on EIS
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GSA.gov. EIS Transition
13
GAO. Telecommunications: Fully Implementing Established Transition Planning Practices Would Help Agencies Reduce Risk of Costly Delays
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GAO. Telecommunications: Agencies Need to Fully Implement Transition Planning Practices
15
Federal News Network. GSA Giving Two Agencies Two Extra Years to Transition to New Telecommunications Contract
16
MeriTalk. GSA Pushes EIS Transition Deadline for 8 Agencies to 2026
17
Congress.gov. Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions Transition
18
GSA.gov. GSA Small Business Subcontracting Program
19
Acquisition.gov. FAR 52.219-9 Small Business Subcontracting Plan
20
SAM.gov. Next Generation Network Infrastructure RFI
21
GSA Blogs. Looking Beyond EIS: Help GSA Define the Future of Federal Telecommunications
22
The White House. Ensuring Commercial, Cost-Effective Solutions in Federal Contracts