NEW YORK-In an unusual but not unprecedented step, the U.S. Commercial Service Export Assistance Center will be hosting what its officials call a “reverse trade mission” in the Boston and New York areas in mid-February.
The matchmaking tour comprises a delegation of executives from 15 Israeli high-technology companies that will be showcasing their products to prospective American business partners. The meetings are scheduled Feb. 12-13 in New York City, Feb. 14 on Long Island and Feb. 15-16 in Boston.
The participants include Modem-Art, a maker of third-generation cellular systems and mobile accessories. The company said it has developed a “system-on-a-chip communications engine that will support many … existing and future communications protocols … and can address multiprotocol and multichannel systems.”
Another visitor will be NetEye Corp., which describes itself as a provider of “carrier-grade, real-time fraud and security management solutions for IP (Internet Protocol) and next-generation networks.”
Persay Ltd. said it “offers voice-based speaker verification solutions” targeted at the customer contact centers of telecommunications operators and financial institutions.
Silentium Ltd., as its name implies, said it has developed “active noise reduction and control solutions implemented on a (computer) chip.”
Zapper Technologies describes itself as a developer of “advanced information retrieval technologies … packaged into cross-platform, fully integrated, user-friendly, scalable solutions, providing instant access to the most relevant information and services at any time, from any place and from any device.”
Reverse trade missions, which bring foreign companies to the United States, are “unusual, but they are a budding program,” said Jennifer A. Yeske, an international trade specialist for the New York office of the Commercial Service. “Liana Fokshene, our IT (information technology) specialist at the American Embassy in Israel was here last summer meeting with companies in her sector. She got very excited about what’s going on here in Silicon Alley and wanted to bring Israeli companies here.
“The Middle East and North Africa have become a hotbed of wireless telecom. The Israelis have a lot of R&D, but they come to the United States to link up with companies that can help them commercialize or expand their products. U.S. companies get access to new technologies and also to new markets.”
The U.S. Commercial Service, which is part of the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration, is engaged in a multiplicity of initiatives, all designed to promote exports of American goods and services.
In the fall, the Service conducted “a virtual, online trade show with telecommunications companies in Singapore,” said Bryan Harmon, also an international trade specialist in the New York office.
The export promotion agency held a video conference with companies in Thailand’s telecommunications sector on Jan. 17.
Dan Edwards, with the International Trade Administration in Washington, D.C., is the host of an actual “Telecommunications Matchmaking Tour to India” on Feb. 26, Harmon added.
The Commercial Service also tailors its market research and matchmaking efforts to individual companies, not just those participating in trade missions, Harmon said. By way of example, he cited the case of an American company that rents cellular phones for use abroad.
“We were able to pull a list of resellers, wireless carriers and potential contacts in various countries, including Spain, France, Chile and Brazil,” he said.
The Commercial Service also produces detailed reports that examine entire industry sectors in different countries and the market opportunities they afford. In recent months, just to name a few, the agency has published its “Overview of the U.K. Telecom Services Industry” and its analysis of “Wireless Access (Application) Protocol in the Spanish Market.”
“Our goal is to have every (American) company be in every market it needs to be in,” Harmon said.
