On Friday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which will provide the grants for the Broadband Telecommunications Opportunity Program, exempted service providers from the "buy American" provision in the stimulus bill for most types of equipment that go into a broadband network. This includes switching, routing, transport and access equipment, as well as customer premises equipment such as modems and set-top boxes. Service providers are also exempt from the rule when choosing billing and operations systems.

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