AT&T Government Solutions, the subsidiary of AT&T Corp. that will perform the work, has been involved in the design, installation and operation of the National Network Operations Center for the past 16 years. The center allows FEMA to remotely monitor its communications networks and the applications that run on them.

The center is part of FEMA’s Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center located in northern Virginia.

Terms of the deal call for AT&T to provide a range of duties, including program management, local area and wide area network configuration and video conferencing set up. The company also will arrange satellite communications, set up call centers, install PBX systems and provide help desk services.

As part of the agreement, AT&T employees are often deployed to disaster areas. Thirty-four AT&T staffers were deployed to several disaster field offices and call centers in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. They will use the new AT&T video conferencing service to help expedite recovery missions.