Atlas Wide Area Network Services

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO – the Authority), together with the British Council (BC), referred to jointly as the Partners, wish to gain feedback and insight from the market on a potential procurement for global wide area networking and related services. The Partners currently operate a wide area network spanning over 400 locations in around 160 countries and territories. This network is based on MPLS/VSAT, together with a range of network integration services under the ECHO2 contract. This core is supplemented by various Partner-provided last-mile technologies around the world. The majority of network traffic is internet-based rather than carried over the SD-WAN core. The network(s) support services including, but not limited to, office applications, video and voice. The Partners seek to procure services that will modernise and manage these global networking capabilities to meet the organisations’ future needs. To this end, the FCDO is conducting this market engagement exercise in order to:

• develop the Authority’s requirements and approach to the procurement;
• identify suppliers that may be able to supply the goods, services or works required; and
• identify likely contractual terms.

In particular, the Authority wishes to gain feedback from a wide range of suppliers, including but not limited to those that might be able to provide:

• a single service to meet our needs;
• one or more elements of the requirement; and/or
• novel or evolving solutions in the technology and service areas relevant to the potential procurement.

The Authority wishes to gain insight into topics including, but not limited to:

• evolving technologies;
• operating model options;
• approaches to global wide area networking;
• approaches to implementation and management; and
• approaches to hardware ownership.

A background paper and set of questions are available via Portal. The questionnaire and expression of interest for engagement events must be completed by 23 November 2026. If you are interested in meeting (virtually or in a hybrid format) with the Partners as part of this engagement process, please indicate this at your earliest convenience by registering via FCDO’s eSourcing Portal: https://fcdo.bravosolution.co.uk/ – pqq_2122 – Early Market Engagement (EME) for Atlas Programme: Network Integration Service.