Next year the United States Census Bureau will announce the headcount from its once-a-decade nationwide census, the result of a four-year process run by systems integrator Harris Corporation and Sprint (NYSE:S), the census’s exclusive wireless data provider. This will be the first census to be partially automated through Sprint’s wireline and wireless data support allowing for the real-time collection of data.

Harris’s selection of Sprint is a significant win for the third-largest network operator and it’s Business Markets Group (BMG). The 4,000 employee BMG was formed at the end of March to specifically target businesses and government customers with wireless, wireline and converged solutions. Sprint was awarded the 2010 census contract with Harris in 2006, but the two companies have worked together on several past initiatives, according to Sprint client executive Isaac Negusse.

Beginning in April, the two companies sent more than 140,000 workers into the field, equipped with custom devices to collect census data and transmit it back to the Bureau over Sprint’s network. The HTC Census device was specifically built for the Census program. The data-only handset specializes in GPS for remote address verification and comes equipped with an extended battery, fingerprint ID scanning and a custom-built address canvassing application, all running on the Windows Mobile operating system.

Rather than rely on time-consuming, expensive and often inaccurate paper address lists and printed maps this year, Harris designed the Field Data Collection Automation (FDCA) database to automate the collection and management of addresses and GPS data. As such, the address canvassing part of the census is now paperless, even if self-supplied response are not.

Negusse said intensive planning went into mobilizing such a massive workforce, but the initial deployments have been successful so far. According to a Harris spokesman, Harris choose Sprint as a partner due to the strength of its nationwide coverage and service, competitive pricing and the ability to meet the program requirements and time frame.

Harris was looking to streamline its subcontractors to accomplish an integrated wireless and wireline approach to the census, Negusse added. This partnership allowed Sprint to pull all its services together, including 500 MPLS sites, dial-up services, CDMA and 1,500 managed devices, including firewall and intrusion detection, 150,000 active telemetry wireless devices for remote data collection and 1500 mobile broadband cards.

Unique requirements specific to the wireless angle of the project included that Sprint has to canvass every residential address within the US relying on its CDMA wireless technology for coverage. As a backup solution in very rural areas, Sprint also used a legacy toll-free, dial-up system to connect. Negusse said it’s a combination that worked well for such an enormous deployment, but it can also be ported to any of Sprint’s other customers as well.

“We are stressing the wireless portion, but there’s a large wireline network as well using Sprint’s MPLS backbone,” Negusse said. “The product that sits into the middle of this, a service called Data Link, provides a secure, interconnection between the wireline and wireless infrastructures, which in this case had to adhere to government levels of security with respect to Title-13 information. The use case is any wireless- to-wireline integration, but the scale can be anywhere from small-to-medium businesses on up to this massive scale of census employees.”

Sprint has a track record of working with the government, according to Negusse, including to provide the IP network for the Federal Aviation Administration. Sprint was actually the only telecom contractor to hold the primary federal government communications contract for the 18 years leading up to 2007 when it was shut out of the first award for the US General Services Administration’s contract for Networx, its all-IP network. The carrier, however, was later awarded one of the second Networx contracts and has worked with the government on several initiatives of small and large scope since then.

“The BMG structure allows us to focus on our larger customers in an easier fashion,” Negusse said. “The invisible lines in the organization that would hinder doing business with our customers are not there. Our focus remains strong on all our customers, but the BMG organizational structure makes it easier to do these types of deals with our higher-end customers.”