The responsibilities of Federal civil telecommunications are distributed by Congress among the General Services Administration (GSA), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Department of Commerce. GSA provides a centralized organization and coordinated process for acquisition and oversight of equipment and services for an Integrated Federal Telecommunications System (IFTS) to meet federal telecommunication requirements.

The IFTS currently consists of heterogeneous, largely independent networks and telecommunication acquisition programs which are being coordinated through GSA. Under GSA's direct control within the IFTS are the two Federal Telecommunications System 2000 (FfS2000) voice and data networks (Network A-services acquired from AT&T and Network B-services acquired from US Sprint). Presently, the FTS2000 does not provide telecommunication services outside the United States (U.S.), Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. There are, however, federal agency requirements for telecommunication services to international locations. International locations are by definition any locations outside the U.S., excluding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. Agencies requiring international telecommunication services are currently subscribing individually to interlata carriers authorized to provide international telecommunication services and may not be benefiting from economies of aggregating their international telecommunication traffic with other agencies.

The objective of this project is to support GSA in procuring technically-effective and cost-efficient end-to-end international telecommunication services. This will be achieved by aggregating international bound traffic of several agencies, reducing the number of access points to the international carrier's network, establishing a government-wide standard on performance and features of the network, consolidating the billing, and obtaining better discounts due to higher traffic volume. Every agency participating in this program will benefit from better service and lower costs.