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The present Chairman of the FCC within the U.S. is Ajit Pai. Appointed to the place by Donald Trump, Pai will depart the FCC on January 20th, the day that the brand new Biden administration checks in. But that leaves Pai roughly 5 weeks to proceed the present administration’s actions towards Huawei and different Chinese producers. Whether President-elect Biden reverses these orders when he strikes to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is unsure. But the FCC has simply ordered carriers that obtain cash from the Universal Service Fund to “rip and replace” equipment made by Huawei and ZTE.
FCC Chairman Pai orders sure U.S. carriers to “rip and replace” networking gear made by Huawei and ZTE
Earlier this year, our Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau issued a final designation of Huawei Technologies Company, along with its parent, affiliate, and subsidiary companies, as a national security threat as part of the Commission’s ongoing efforts to protect our nation’s communications networks and their supply chains.And today, we affirm the Bureau’s Order designating Huawei as a threat to national security and our nation’s communications infrastructure. A laundry list of evidence before us compels this result and is set forth in our decision today.
But to summarize some of the main points, Huawei has a long and well-documented history of close ties to the Chinese military and intelligence communities, as well as the Chinese Communist Party, at every level of the company—all the way up to its founder. Huawei is subject to sweeping Chinese intelligence laws compelling Huawei’s assistance and cooperation with Chinese intelligence services and forbidding the disclosure of that assistance. Moreover, the concerns about Huawei aren’t just hypothetical: Independent entities have identified numerous security vulnerabilities in Huawei equipment and found it to be less secure than that of other companies—perhaps deliberately so.Our decision today to uphold the Bureau’s final designation order will have a direct impact on the security and integrity of the country’s networks. Carriers will continue to be unable to use support from the Commission’s Universal Service Fund to purchase network equipment or services from Huawei, thus helping to keep its insecure equipment out of our networks.”
Last 12 months, when the FCC first mentioned forcing rural carriers to rip and replace Huawei gear, the FCC estimated that such work would take $1.89 billion and two years to full.
(This story has not been edited by Newslivenation employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)