Augat Gets Consumers Onto Data Superhighway Unheralded Washington Firm Fills Niche In Communications

If you have cable television, chances are you’re watching something helped along by Augat.

Or if you’ve made a long distance telephone call, an Augat product might have helped that happen, too.

Although not a household name among consumers, Augat is an increasingly big name in connectivity products for the telecommunications industry. Augat makes products that help link and boost communication lines around the world.

The Kent-based Communications Products division of the Massachusetts-based firm is a big reason for that. The division has seen sales grow 40 percent a year for the last three years, said Vice President and General Manager Larry Buffington.

Augat has 500 employees in Kent, filling their 56,000-square-foot manufacturing facility to the point where they have acquired a second lease nearby and will move some work there. The company hopes to use this Pacific Rim location as a jumping off point to Asian markets.

“We have gotten very aggressive on our product line and business strategy,” Buffington said. “We were a distant No. 2 in our connector business and now we’re nose to nose with No. 1 (Gilbert Corp.).”

Augat is a $530 million company that provides connectivity products to the automotive, telecommunications and data processing industries. In telecommunications, that means items such as connectors that allow cable television companies to match up high-volume, fiber-optic lines to the low-volume coaxial cables that still carry individual signals to consumers’ homes.

Augat’s Kent employees also do sales and research and development in addition to manufacturing. Other Kent products include equipment that allows telephone companies to easily switch and connect lines, and amplifiers that boost cable TV signals along the way.

The amplifiers aren’t what you find in your stereo; they’re distinctly industrial, small and heavy duty. “They’re usually either hanging from something or buried in the ground,” Buffington said, so they take a beating.

The Kent plant includes a terror room for testing those amps; its temperature can be lowered to minus-40 degrees or raised to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Augat came to Seattle with the acquisition of Telzon, a telecommunications supplier, in the 1980s.