High Bid No Problem for Connected Nation in Florida -- It Wins Anyway

Imagine a state is going through a bidding process for a contract. It happens all the time. The factors that normally are taken into account are price, experience, that type of thing. Under normal circumstances, then, a bid with a high price and no experience in a given state might well lose to another bid with a lower price and lots of experience in a state. Unless, of course, the high bidder with no experience is Connected Nation. Then, as the Florida Department of Management Services showed last month, all bets are off. Last month, the state agency awarded the state contract for broadband mapping to Connect Florida, the newly established affiliate of Connected Nation. According to the Florida agency, Connected Nation's project cost will be around $7.1 million. On the other hand, the cost submitted by the second-place bidder, ISC of Tallahassee was half that - around $2.8 million.