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Buy American, but maybe not for broadband gear
The U.S. Commerce Dept. and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration have made an adjustment to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that loosens the "buy American" requirement in particular for companies that win a piece of the $7.2 billion broadband stimulus package. Though a few vendors had supported the "buy American" requirement, many others did not, including the largest equipment vendors, which get many different component systems from all over the world.
The broadband exception to the "buy American" rule covers broadband switches, router, transport and access gear, and customer premises equipment, but not coaxial or optical cables, which must be granted an additional waiver if foreign-made.
For more:
- Telephony has this story
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Zhone was one company that supported the "buy American" rule
Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent disagreed with the requirement
Comments
Posted by Mark | June 30, 2009 - 11:09am
Mr. Brooks, the key point is that these companies have accepted billions of dollars of American taxpayers' money. You would be happy if they turned around & used that money to build up a DIFFERENT contry's economy? The "buy American" rule IS fair... it ensures that the taxpayers' money is re-invested back into the AMERICAN economy. The fact that there is now an exception for broadband equipment... now THAT'S not fair.
Posted by Norm Brooks | June 29, 2009 - 12:52pm
Oh sure, buy American but sell everywhere. Is that fair?
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