FCC looks to ban 'national security risk' vendors from US telcos

The US could ban telecoms subsidies from being used to purchase equipment from suppliers considered to be a national security threat.

Federal Communications Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposals would stop any money received from the $8.5 billion Universal Service Fund being used to purchase routers, switches and “virtually any other type” of telecommunications equipment from certain vendors.

The plan has now been shared with Pai’s fellow commissioners and will be voted upon at a meeting next month.

Blocked

No companies were named specifically, but Chinese giant Huawei has effectively been frozen out of the US market because of national security concerns. Specifically, there are fears about ‘backdoors’ in telecoms networks that could allow a hostile government to launch malware attacks, stage DDoS assaults or steal sensitive data.

For its part, Huawei has always denied any such risk and is key partner for many UK telecoms firms, including BT, EE and Vodafone.

“Although the FCC alone can’t safeguard the integrity of our communications supply chain, we must and will play our part in a government- and industry-wide effort to protect the security of our networks,” said Pai.

“The money in the Universal Service Fund comes from fees paid by the American people, and I believe that the FCC has the responsibility to ensure that this money is not spent on equipment or services that pose a threat to national security.

Earlier this month, President Trump vetoed Broadcom’s acquisition of Qualcomm on national security grounds. The order cited fears that Broadcom would not continue the same level of investment into research and development, allowing Chinese vendors such as Huawei to take the lead in 5G.

The FCC will meet on 14 April, where it will also vote on a public notice for input unto the procedure for the upcoming auction of 24GHz and 28GHz spectrum. These millimetre Wave (mmWave) bands will be used in the first tranche of 5G services which are expected to arrive in the US next year.

 

Steve McCaskill is TechRadar Pro's resident mobile industry expert, covering all aspects of the UK and global news, from operators to service providers and everything in between. He is a former editor of Silicon UK and journalist with over a decade's experience in the technology industry, writing about technology, in particular, telecoms, mobile and sports tech, sports, video games and media. 

Latest in Security
Power cables stretching out in front of the horizon
Solar grids could be hijacked and even potentially disabled by these security flaws
Spam messages
Microsoft Stream classic domain hijacked, causing spam across SharePoint
Isometric demonstrating multi-factor authentication using a mobile device.
NCSC gets influencers to sing the praises of 2FA
Sam Altman and OpenAI
OpenAI is upping its bug bounty rewards as security worries rise
A stylized depiction of a padlocked WiFi symbol sitting in the centre of an interlocking vault.
Dangerous new CoffeeLoader malware executes on your GPU to get past security tools
China
Notorious Chinese hackers FamousSparrow allegedly target US financial firms
Latest in News
Power cables stretching out in front of the horizon
Solar grids could be hijacked and even potentially disabled by these security flaws
Lenovo | Thinkpad T14s Gen 6 Snapdragon
Windows 11’s latest patch declares war on BIOS updates for some Lenovo laptops, blocking them as a security risk in a bizarre turn of events
Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra
Samsung confirms Galaxy Watches aren't tracking sleep properly – here's the fix if you're affected
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream screenshot showing a Mii smelling some fresh flowers.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is a sequel to my favorite 3DS game, and I think it's already packing the charm that inZOI lacks
Spam messages
Microsoft Stream classic domain hijacked, causing spam across SharePoint
ChatGPT logo
ChatGPT 4o just got better, although I’m yet to notice a difference