Invitation to Tender at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)

Posted by Future on Fri 22nd Oct, 2021 - nigeriantenders.com

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) invites interested and reliable VSAT vendor(s) to indicate interest by submitting tender documents for the following works:

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is an independent humanitarian organisation helping people forced to flee. We work in crises in more than 30 countries, where we help save lives and rebuild futures.

NRC is a humanitarian INGO established in 1946 and currently working in nearly 40 countries to aid those displaced by war and conflict. With nearly 8000 staff serving over 14 million people, NRC has ongoing strategic initiatives related to working in hard-to-reach areas as well as ambitious objectives to improve operations through digital transformation as well as to deliver assistance, where possible, by digital means.

Applications are invited for:

Title: Invitation to Tender for a global framework agreement to provide VSAT services

Preamble

In order to assist refugees and internally displaced persons where they are, NRC needs to be able to operate effectively in those locations. As back-office operations has moved to the cloud, utilizing services such as Office 365, Oracle HCM, Agresso by Unit4, Salesforce, and more, it is increasingly vital that each office has sufficient capacity. Furthermore, we are seeing an increase in programmes, such as legal assistance, that are using online resources to reach the millions of people we serve. Adequate internet is no longer optional, it is vital to our operations.

NRC must select a VSAT vendor by the end of 2021 for several reasons including:

Current contract end-date
Increased minimum-capacity requirements for internet-based tools and services due to digital transformation
Ongoing lack of terrestrial options in many locations
Increased demand to improve quality of signal and service.

Requirements

Technical:

Capacity: See attached spreadsheet for current indicative use. We currently expect some growth in all of these sites. We have included some non-satellite locations for comparison and would consider moving them if supplier’s offering is competitive.
Uptime: 99.96% or better
Packet loss: 0.5% or better
Latency: while NRC would like to target 550ms, we recognize that this may vary by site and that there are technical constraints. However, latency should not exceed 600ms.
Upload: the solution must allow scaling of upload speeds to greater than 2Mbps except where mutually agreed.
Traffic shaping can be a valuable tool in optimizing bandwidth. Please describe your solution and whether it can accommodate different profiles for different times of day.
Re-use: NRC has already invested in dishes, BUC, modems, and power, etc, for our current VSAT locations. Most of our hardware is as follows although we also have some Norsat LNB and other variations.

Dish	Modem	BUC	Power	Tech	LNB	Model	Ratio
1.8 M	Newtec MDM3310	Belcon Mblc-8-F	8 watts	C-Band	C-band PLL LNB	NJS8487H	Dedicated

N/B: Please describe the minimum new investment, if any, to adopt supplier’s solution.
Coverage: While the majority of NRC’s satellite communication needs (and the priority in this request) are in Africa and Yemen, see attached spreadsheet, we operate across the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America. Please provide any maps and roll-out roadmaps beyond Africa with significant variation in latency and cost, if any.
While this tender is primarily for VSAT services, NRC procures fibre, telephony, and other telecommunication services. If you also offer terrestrial, microwave, and other services in the regions where we operate, please describe them here and whether such services could be included in the agreement.
Coverage: If there are any NRC countries in which you cannot deploy services due to regulatory or legal constraints, please list them.
Mobile or Temporary Solutions (optional): NRC specializes in being able to serve people in hard-to reach areas and often needs to run temporary assessments in these areas before establishing a more permanent presence. If you have any portable solutions suitable for a small team to take into a remote area and be able to deploy themselves and then bring back, please describe the solution and associated costs.
Do you operate your own teleport? If so, please specify location(s), scale of the operation, and upcoming plans. If not, please elaborate on your partnerships and how you guarantee continuity and quality of the service.

Application Closing Date

25th October, 2021.

Submission of Documents

All documents and offers should be addressed and delivered via email to: ict.procurement@nrc.no

For more clarificatiions on this tender document, please Click Here (PDF).