Thames Water has awarded a contract for telephone and data transmission services to Vodafone with an estimated total value of £75 million.

The managed telephony contract covers the provision of service management activities to govern the operations of the telecoms services. This includes the initial provision of corporate mobile, OT M2M, MDM, fixed lines, SIP, IPT, WAN, Unified Communications and internet services.

The water company has also reserved the right to include telecoms equipment, satellite and Contact Centre services and pthe rovision of SMS services in scope in the future.

Under the contract Vodafone will be expected to manage a controlled transition of services from the incumbents to minimise risks to business continuity, optimise stranded costs and deliver transformation in the most cost effective and efficient manner.

Vodafone was one of two companies in the bidding for the contract, which was tendered as a single Lot.

The agreement is intended to be for 7 years in total, with an initial term of 4 years. The water company will set out the details of what is described as a termination for convenience option at a later stage.

Under the contract, Thames Water expects to have the flexibility to benefit from the efficiencies and improvements offered by new and evolving technologies, adapted to offer relevant IT network services to meet the utility’s business needs. The agreement will be directly with Thames Water but will be managed on its behalf by an agent.