The State of Texas, through its Department of Information Resources (TXDIR), has negotiated State contracts with all major cellular carriers. The City of Allen had at one time used Verizon for data connections in public safety vehicles and Sprint for cellular phone and voice services. Within the last decade, testing showed T-Mobile to have superior coverage and speeds in Allen for our public safety vehicle connections and that carrier was selected for that service. Subsequently in 2017, the Council authorized the City of Allen to change cellular voice services from Sprint to T-Mobile, again due to increased coverage and reliability along with cost savings based on the TXDIR contract.
T-Mobile currently provides nearly all cellular services including voice, data, hotspots, and cellular-based mobile device purchases for the City of Allen. Allen currently has 221 mobile voice lines and 301 mobile data lines.
This contract is procured through the State of Texas DIR purchasing program and is therefore able to be utilized on a month-to-month basis. If at any point the City determines that a better solution is available, the DIR contract allows the flexibility of terminating the agreement at the end of the month and moving services to a new carrier.
By combining cellular voice, data services and mobile device hardware, the annual cost of the combined sets of services exceeds $100,000 annually. For this reason the Purchasing and Information Technology departments are presenting this agenda communication to inform and gain authorization from the City Council to continue using the T-Mobile Texas DIR contract for cellular services.