AT&T to run Cold War-era military network for five more years
In 1964, AT&T introduced the PicturePhone at the New York World's Fair and the Defense Communications Agency managed global communications for the Defense Department based primarily on voice and teletype circuits. Since then, AT&T has been broken up and then reconstituted, the Defense Communications Agency morphed in 1991 into the Defense Information Systems Agency -- which runs a global network based primarily on data communications -- and Skype realized the PicturePhone vision of consumer video calling in 2005. Around the time AT&T introduced the PicturePhone, it also developed a voice conferencing nuclear command-and-control network called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Alerting Network. DISA plans to give AT&T a sole-source contract to keep the network in operation for another five years.
AT&T to run Cold War-era military network for five more years