Image: Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday formally designated Chinese’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE as posing threats to US national security, a declaration that bars US firms from tapping an US$8.3-billion government fund to purchase equipment from the companies.

The US telecommunications regulator voted in November 5-0 to issue the declaration and proposed requiring rural carriers to remove and replace equipment from the two Chinese companies from existing US networks.

We cannot and will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to exploit network vulnerabilities and compromise our critical communications infrastructure

FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said on Tuesday that “untrustworthy equipment” remains in place in US networks and said the US congress must allocate funding for replacements.

Threats

In April, the FCC said it may shut down US operations of three state-controlled Chinese telecoms companies.

In May 2019, the FCC voted to deny another state-owned Chinese telecoms company, China Mobile, the right to provide US services, citing risks that the Chinese government could use the company to conduct espionage against the US government.