Jeff Mohan, executive director of AT&T's Networx Program Office, says AT&T has received multiple orders for MTIPS services. AT&T hopes to have its MTIPS solution certified in August.

"MTIPS is a sweet spot for us," Mohan says. "It takes advantage of capabilities that we have developed in the security arena for large, multinational corporations. We're pretty excited about it."

Carriers like AT&T and Qwest are gearing up for a significant amount of business from their MTIPS contracts because of how the federal TIC initiative has evolved in recent months.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) originally hoped to reduce the number of federal Internet access points from 8,000 to less than 100, but agency staff backed off when they realized this goal was too aggressive. Carriers also complained that the original plan would put large federal agencies in the position of operating as ISPs for smaller agencies, thereby competing against them to provide managed security services to the federal market.

Now OMB is going to allow only a handful of the largest federal agencies to operate their own secure Internet access points, while the rest of the civilian agencies are expected to buy MTIPS services from the carriers.