But information ministry spokesman Bitange Ndemo said the company edged out their four competitors (Fujistu, NEC, Tyco Telecommunication and Huawei Technologies) on price and time-scale.
He told a news conference that Alcatel-Lucent had indicated it could "complete the construction of the undersea cable seven months ahead of others", AFP news agency reports.
Work on Teams is expected to start as soon as the deal is signed and the high-capacity fibre-optic cable should be in place within 16 months, before the end of the second quarter of 2009.
Earlier this year, Alcatel-Lucent won the contract to lay the long-delayed East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy), which is set to run from South Africa to Sudan.
This scheme was originally expected to be operational at the beginning of 2008.
