Information Resource Engineering, a White Marsh-based manufacturer of communications security products, said yesterday that it has landed a contract that will bolster its role in the emerging market for digital phone equipment.
IRE said GTE Government Systems Corp. of Needham Heights, Mass., has signed an agreement designating the Maryland company as its provider of encryption hardware and adapters for the digital switching systems GTE sells to the federal government.
The contract is worth as much as $3 million in annual sales, according to IRE.
If GTE purchases as much equipment as IRE anticipates, the contract could more than double IRE's revenue of $2.6 million in 1993, the last full year reported.
Under the contract, GTE will use IRE's Remote Access series of products when it sells integrated services digital network (ISDN) switches to its customers in the U.S. military. IRE will also provide GTE with encoding and decoding technology for conventional analog phones.
ISDN is a technology that provides greater bandwidth -- that is, a larger "pipeline" through which data or video can flow at higher speeds -- than conventional copper phone lines. After languishing for years, the technology is now being deployed widely.