The FCC is investigating the U.S. operations of several Chinese telecom firms such as Huawei, ZTE, and China Telecom. The U.S. regulatory agency is concerned that the Chinese companies are not following the restrictions placed on their U.S. businesses. Both Huawei and ZTE are huge suppliers of telecom equipment to rural wireless providers in the U.S. The FCC is also looking at wireless provider China Mobile International USA and the U.S. units of wireless firms China Telecom and China Unicom.
The regulatory agency wants to see information showing in detail how the targeted companies are running their operations in the U.S. One goal that the FCC has is to determine whether the companies that are being targeted by the FCC are able to bypass U.S. restrictions thanks to help from other companies.
As mentioned by FCC chairman Brendan Carr, some of these businesses are not bothering to follow through on sanctions placed on them by the U.S. Some of these companies had their authorization to do business in the U.S. pulled while others have been placed on a list of companies that the U.S. government is not allowed to buy products from.
“I’m pleased to see Chairman Carr and the Trump administration taking the fight to Chinese Communist-controlled telecom companies, These firms are little more than fronts for the repressive and corrupt Chinese intelligence apparatus.”-Senator Tom Cotton
The FCC’s Carr says that the agency must first look at what the targeted companies are doing in the U.S. and then “move quickly to close any loopholes that have permitted untrustworthy, foreign adversary-backed actors to skirt our rules.” Carr recently started a new council on national security that has the FCC focusing on telecom and cyber-related threats from countries that include China. The latter is one country that the FCC’s investigation is particularly focused on.
The Chinese embassy in Washington says that Beijing “opposes overstretching the concept of national security, using national apparatus to bring down Chinese companies.” Spokesperson Liu Pengyu added, “We oppose turning trade and technological issues into political weapons.” Even though Beijing says over and over that Huawei and other Chinese firms are not using their products or businesses to spy, Chinese law requires tech companies to cooperate with the demands of the Chinese government.
The other Chinese companies that are part of the FCC’s investigation include Hytera Communications, Hikvision, the world’s largest manufacturer of surveillance cameras, Dahua Technology which also makes surveillance cameras, telecom provider Pacifica Network and its ComNet subsidiary.
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