MARA Technologies USA’s Matt Bratcher give a production line tour to Alan Davidson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and Administrator, NTIA. (Photo: Business Wire)
Vecima’s first domestically manufactured fiber products are produced by MARA Technologies USA to support Build America, Buy America requirements.
VICTORIA, British Columbia, and HOLLY, Mich.—Some of Vecima Networks Inc.’s first U.S.-made internet network electronics equipment—its Entra® SF-4X Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) Optical Line Terminals (OLTs)—rolled off the production line recently at the Michigan facility of MARA Technologies USA, Inc., a subsidiary of Invotek Group Inc., the companies said in a joint release.
Vecima Networks has expanded manufacturing into the United States for certain products in its Entra portfolio to meet the proposed Build America, Buy America (BABA) requirements under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. The program, established under the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA) to expand high-speed internet access across the United States, is administered by the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NITA).
The manufacturing expansion of certain Vecima Entra Fiber Access OLTs to the United States offers service providers an industry-recognized OLT option for their buildout of fiber broadband networks under the BEAD program, the company said in the release.
“The MARA team is thrilled to deliver Vecima’s first SF-4X Fiber products manufactured in the U.S.,” said Paul LaCroix, CEO of Invotek, in the release. “Our production facility is fully operational, and with the addition of our new distribution warehouse, we will provide more value-added services while increasing overall capacity. We expect to add up to 100 highly skilled jobs in our state-of-the-art Holly, Michigan facility to support the Vecima program.”
The milestone was marked with an official visit to the MARA Technologies USA Holly facility on August 28 by Alan Davidson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and National Telecommunications and Information Administration Administrator.
The $42.45 billion BEAD Program allows for states, territories, the District of Columbia (D.C.), and Puerto Rico (P.R.) to use funding for broadband adoption and deployment, upgrading, and installation projects to bring high-speed internet access across the U.S. to underserved and unserved communities.
Vecima stated in the release that its portfolio of 10G PON products has achieved strong market adoption. In March 2023, the Dell’Oro Group named Vecima the global market share leader in Remote MACPHY and Remote OLT Distributed Access Architecture (DAA) solutions, the company said.
“Our customers can now deploy Vecima’s Entra SF-4X as part of their efforts to deliver high-speed fiber broadband to all communities,” said Clay McCreery, chief operating officer of Vecima, in the release. “The Entra SF-4X is the global Remote OLT market share leader and a proven solution for operators building high-speed broadband networks for all Americans.”
Invotek Group supports OEMs through its manufacturing and engineering centers in the United States and Canada. The company stated that its strategy is “to work with customers to develop and engineer world-class processes that deliver optimized performance in cost and quality.”
“We do this through in-depth, open-book, collaborative efforts with your design and engineering teams,” the release stated. “We have a long history with broadband electronics manufacturing, and over the past 20 years have developed world-class capabilities with IoT product development and power management systems for the electric vehicle market.”