Level 3 Communications will provide IP VPN services to Sears, Roebuck & Co. stores nationwide through a network outsourcing deal that telecom experts say is one of the largest of its kind.

Level 3 will provide its (3)Flex Network IP VPN services to Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), which is the prime contractor on the Sears IT outsourcing arrangement.

CSC announced in June that it had won a 10-year, $1.6 billion IT outsourcing contract from Sears that includes support for desktops, servers, data networks and Web-related systems. CSC has taken over IT support for more than 2,300 Sears stores in the U.S. and Canada, and it has hired nearly 200 of Sears' IT employees. CSC ran a competitive procurement to select an IP VPN carrier, and Level 3 won the contract.

"Level 3's technology leadership and high-quality network services make them an integral component of the IT solution that CSC will provide Sears," Don Durbin, CSC vice president for America's Outsourcing, said in a statement. "Level 3's IP VPN service provides the [Multi-protocol Label Switching]-based network that will enable future network convergence for Sears, improving both network manageability and costs."

Analysts say they believe Level 3 competed against the leading IP VPN service providers in the U.S. - including AT&T, MCI and Sprint - to win the Sears contract.

"This is a huge deal for Level 3," says Michael Howard, principal analyst with Infonetics Research. "It's a huge commitment by a blue-ribbon stock company like Sears. This means that CSC and Sears absolutely believe that Level 3's network - which is a very solid network - is something they can bet their business on for years to come."

"This is very good news for Level 3," agreed J.P. Gownder, a senior analyst at The Yankee Group. "As a company that only sells indirectly, Level 3 hasn't been able to demonstrate to the marketplace that they can provide a really big enterprise with a major product category like IP VPN services. This deal shows that working through a channel partner, a systems integrator, they can actualize the strategy they put out there."

Sears will use Level 3's (3)Flex Network IP VPN services to replace multiple legacy networks with one network based on MPLS technology. Sears will be able to run voice, data and video traffic over Level 3's MPLS converged network.