Zhone: "Buy American" for broadband stimulus

The "Buy American" movement has been a simmering undercurrent to the attempts by the Obama administration and Congress to stimulate the American economy. It's interesting and ironic to hear "Buy American" pleas at a time after many U.S. companies have off-shored operations and employees, or have sold out completely to international corporations. That ship appears to have sailed, in a manner of speaking, and many U.S. companies charted their own course.

Yet, as broadband stimulus funds from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act are being prepared for distribution, at least one telecom network equipment vendor is asking that the agencies distributing those funds-the National Telecommunications & Information Administration and the Rural Utilities Service-give the highest funding priority to firms using U.S. labor, according to a report at Light Reading. Zhone CEO Mory Ejabat said in his appeal that priority be given to proposals that "show the highest expected American labor content in implementation - and that this metric should have at least equal if not higher weighting than metrics regarding expansion of broadband availability, increasing adoption, and increasing speed, in keeping with the priorities of the overall Act."

We speak only half-facetiously when we ask: Are there any of those companies left, and do they have anything worth buying? The answer, of course, is yes, and the choices go beyond the obvious, like Tellabs and Motorola. Light Reading has a good table showing several vendors and the extent to which they have headquarters, engineering and manufacturing operations in the U.S.

For more:
- Light Reading has this report [1]