The tangled saga of the US Treasury Department’s $100m telephone system – which first went out to tender in 1985 – has reached another turning point: it was awarded to AT&T Co a couple of years ago, taken away and awarded to Bell Atlantic Corp on appeal, and then snatched from Bell Atlantic on grounds that the Philadelphia company misled the Treasury in its complaint; that led to Bell Atlantic being temporarily barred from bidding on government contracts; that bar has now been lifted and it can rebid on the Treasury contract – while the poor bean-counters sit there patiently waiting for a modern telephone system.
