Under the DHS OneNet telecommunications deal, Verizon was awarded the primary contract for work on the DHS East and West regions and AT&T will focus on regional service centers as part of a secondary award. The total value of the contracts, awarded under the U.S. General Services Administration's Networx program, is worth up to $1 billion, NextGov.com reported.

Officials say the OneNet telecommunications initiative is an effort to establish a DHS intranet network for transmission of sensitive but unclassified information. Verizon and AT&T will also work to consolidate seven legacy networks, or networks that aren't based on the standard Internet Protocol.

"It's a huge contract, including not only the basic IP infrastructure and wide-area network, but also service-level agreements that go above and beyond the standard, and options for emergency communication (capabilities) anywhere in the world in 48 hours," Warren Suss, a federal telecommunications analyst and founder of Suss Consulting, said in a statement reported by NextGov.com.