T-Mobile US and Lumen Technologies this week made good on a deal announced three months ago to pair assets from their respective networks for government agencies.

Lumen, one of nine vendors approved for the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) technology buying program, can now include access to T-Mobile’s 5G network in the bidding process for government contracts. 

The project is part of the U.S. government’s $50 billion telecommunications and network modernization initiative. About one third of that total $50 billion opportunity has been awarded to date. 

“A key use case for government that the Lumen/T-Mobile fixed wireless solution addresses is continuity for mission critical communications,” David Bezzant, T-Mobile’s VP for the government and public sector, wrote in response to questions. 

“T-Mobile 5G fixed wireless is a complimentary broadband connection for government [agencies’] primary Lumen fiber connections that need route diversity and mission critical application failover connectivity to protect against terrestrial outages caused by natural disasters, fiber cuts, or other unpredicted accidents,” he added.

The combination of Lumen’s fiber network and SD-WAN services with T-Mobile’s wireless network also allows government agencies to segment and switch traffic between fiber and 5G based on software-defined rules to deliver uninterrupted performance, Bezzant explained. 

“Government agencies need scalable, secure networks with edge cloud computing services located where essential data is acquired, analyzed, and acted upon for quick and easy access,” David Young, SVP of Lumen’s public sector business, said in a statement.

T-Mobile is Lumen’s preferred wireless vendor supporting its goals in the public sector, and Lumen is T-Mobile’s only publicly acknowledged mobile edge computing partner to date. T-Mobile opted to backload edge into its 5G strategy, focusing instead on an aggressive 5G network buildout that has elicited undeniable, and more immediate benefits. 

While it increasingly positions itself for a broader foray into the cloud and mobile edge computing space, AT&T and Verizon, the strongest operator proponents of 5G edge, remain somewhat split in their respective approaches to the opportunity with a dizzying number of partnerships and schemes. 

T-Mobile earlier this year said it’s targeting a 20% market share in the enterprise and small to midsized business segment by 2025. Its current market share is below 10%, so it could make progress on that goal if Lumen and T-Mobile land some large government contracts. 

That hasn’t occurred yet. “We don’t have any customers that we can name,” Bezzant said. However, there is still about $30 billion in government telecom contracts up for grabs.

The process, as with most things involving bureaucrats, has taken longer than expected. A spokesperson for the GSA recently told Federal News Network that nine of 17 large agencies and 11 of 25 medium agencies have awarded all related contracts. 

The GSA, which expects to manage a total of 212 solicitations for EIS bids, has released 164 for bid, and 94 of those have been awarded. AT&T, another EIS approved vendor, claims it’s won almost 40% of EIS deals awarded to date.