Local carriage service providers are preparing to battle it out for a slice of Centrelink's AU$100 million telecommunications tender.

The request for tender (RFT) is due for release on Friday afternoon with industry players suggesting the organisations' end-game is to ditch expensive point-to-point frame relay circuits in favour of DSL and Virtual Private Networking (VPN) solutions sourced from smaller outfits.

SecureTel managing director David Stevens says he'll be throwing the proverbial hat into the ring at the earliest opportunity -- it's a chance to take a chunk out of Telstra and the big players. "We'll have a go at that one," he said. "It's going to pull business out of Telstra, Optus, Powertel and those guys and bring it to people like ourselves, Request, Netspace and people who deal more as carriage service providers."

The playing field is finally levelling out, Stevens says, with VPN solutions becoming a viable alternative for medium business to point to point frame connections -- the technological evolution in the market is allowing companies like his to at last compete at the top end of the market. "It looks as if Centrelink are factoring in for a significant amount of growth," he said, in reference to Centrelink's projected ten fold increase in demand over the next five years. "The other thing that's quite evident is their poised to pull a lot of frame circuits out... which puts the CSPs that don't own a physical network on the ground in the box seat."

While the deal may hold promise for a carriage service provider like SecureTel, companies like Request Broadband, which operates its own physical network, are salivating at the prospect of taking a big bite at the Centrelink RFT. Request's chief executive, Phil Sykes, told ZDNet Australia  the company is ready to rip into the tender process.

"We clearly want to put a pretty compelling offer on the table," he said.

Sykes agrees Centrelink's RFT signifies a shift in the market from a technological point of view. "There are alternatives now to just buying point to point connections," he said.

Perhaps of some concern to its partners is Requests' refusal to rule out bidding for the project directly -- it primarily shifts its product through reseller channels. "We won't rule it out, no," he said. "But clearly if one of our channels is in there... we'll support them first."

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