Recently, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced a new plan. In this plan, the agency will ban all carriers from using federal subsidies to purchase equipment or services from companies that are harmful to national security. Indirectly, this order is levelled towards Chinese providers, especially Huawei and ZTE.

Congress crackdown on Chinese company continues:

This proposal is another blow in the ongoing trade war between America and China. The men at Capitol Hill are now attacking American companies that do business with Chinese companies. Activision Blizzards and the National Basketball Association (NBA) are recent victims.

FCC Looking to Ban American Company from Buying Huawei and ZTE Telecom Equipment
FCC Looking to Ban American Company from Buying Huawei and ZTE Telecom Equipment

If this proposal is approved, no telecom network could buy Chinese equipment using from the Universal Service Fund.

What is the reason behind this ban?

According to Pai, any hostile foreign actors could use hidden backdoors to our networks. After this, they can easily spy on the people, steal from them, harm them from malware or virus, or exploit them in any other way. He believes that the chines firms Huawei and ZTE have a recorded history of such malicious activity, and this puts American national security at risk.

Huawei didn’t respond to this announcement yet!

As of yet, Huawei hasn’t commented officially on the record, but there are worse things to come for the company. According to the proposal, the government would have to check existing Chinese telecom equipment that is being used in USF-funded networks. If they found any suspicion, then the equipment would have to be removed and replaced. The local service providers would hurt from this the most. Hence, the FCC is looking for a way to financially assist this replacement process.

The proposal will only be passed if it is voted on at the FCC’s Open Meeting on November 19th.

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