Cable manufacturer Prysmian recently announced its entire portfolio of fiber-optic cable products meets Build America Buy America (BABA) requirements and is available to ship. BABA requirements are specific to the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program and include the following for fiber-optic cable.
- Fiber preforms must be manufactured in the United States
- Fiber-optic glass must use those preforms and must be drawn in the U.S.
- Fiber-optic cable must use fiber that meets the above requirements
- Fiber-optic cables’ buffer-jack and strand manufacturing must have been completed in the U.S.
When announcing its BABA-readiness, Prysmian said “with three U.S. facilities located in Claremont, NC; Lexington, SC; and Jackson, TN,” the company “is uniquely positioned to offer ready-to-ship BABA-compliant fiber solutions that support the broadband market and the growing needs of its North American customers.”
Patrick Jacobie, Prysmian North America’s senior vice president for telecom, commented, “Prysmian is proud that we can produce BABA-compliant trusted fiber products and solutions made right here, allowing us to support the BEAD program. We are committed to investing in our people, technology, and manufacturing plants here in the U.S. to ensure that each American has access to reliable and affordable high-speed internet.”
The company added that it “has made significant investments” across its “North American footprint to support the growing need for fiber infrastructure and the BEAD funding program, including a $30-million investment in [the] Jackson, TN factory to retool the facility from legacy copper to fiber-optic cable production, and a $50-million multi-year modernization project at [the] Claremont fiber facility to enhance process capabilities, systems, and technologies to support future growth.”
That investment has yielded, among other dividends, Prysmian’s BABA-ready-now capability.
When Biden Administration senior advisor and infrastructure implementation coordinator Mitch Landrieu visited Prysmian’s Tennessee plant in 2023, he stumped, “Access to high-speed internet is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity to fully participate in today’s society. “President Biden’s Investing in America agenda will help us connect every community across the country to high-speed internet by 2030, and we’re going to do it with American-made fiber.”
The Department of Commerce’s deputy assistant secretary for communication and information, April McClain-Delay, made that same visit to Prysmian’s Tennessee facility, and commented about the company’s contributions to job-creation and skills-development, saying Prysmian not only “answered [the] call” for jobs development, but also “trained a workforce to do it. This company is an example of what we’d like to see other manufacturers do across the country. I am particularly thrilled by Prysmian’s trailblazing work to bridge the gender gap in the telecom workforce.”