Domestic Manufacturing of Routers Unlikely in Near Term: Experts
Companies will need to pursue ‘conditional approval’ to circumvent an FCC ban on foreign-made Wi-Fi routers.
WASHINGTON, March 26, 2026 – It appears companies will need to seek temporary authorization to sell new models of Wi-Fi routers in the United States, experts said this week.
The Federal Communications Commission announced Monday that new models of consumer Wi-Fi routers – ones not already being sold in the U.S. – would not receive necessary authorization unless they were produced domestically. Companies looking to import routers from elsewhere will need to seek a “conditional approval” from the Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security.
“Nearly 100% of consumer-grade routers are manufactured or assembled outside the United States, which means the FCC has significantly limits on new router imports and sales until approvals or waivers are granted,” Jeff Heynen, Dell’Oro Group's vice president for broadband access and home networking, wrote in a Wednesday blog post.
Pro-Wi-Fi group Wi-Fi Now agreed. CEO Claus Hetting wrote Wednesday that “as far as we know there is no domestic US manufacturing of any consumer-grade Wi-Fi router at this time.”
“To our knowledge consumer-grade Wi-Fi routers available in the US are manufactured nearly exclusively in China, Taiwan, and Vietnam,” he wrote.
That includes the biggest companies in the consumer router market: TP-Link, Netgear, Asus, D-Link, and others.
Building up domestic manufacturing would take years and be expensive, Heynan and Hetting wrote, meaning the only near-term option for selling new routers in the U.S. is to get a conditional approval.
Consumer equipment “margins are incredibly slim to begin with, which makes it almost impossible that these companies would even consider onshoring manufacturing, where input costs are significantly higher than in Southeast Asia,” Heynan wrote.
Asked at the FCC’s monthly meeting Thursday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said conditional approvals would be granted by DOD or DHS. He said those agencies would process applications and make their own determinations.
“Ours is more of a ministerial job,” he said. “We encourage people to work directly with those two organizations on this.”
According to FCC guidance, also posted Monday, a conditional approval application would have to include ownership and supply chain information, plus a “detailed, time-bound plan to establish or expand manufacturing in the United States for the router for which the applicant is seeking Conditional Approval in order for that device to qualify for FCC authorization.”
Conditional approvals will be granted for up to 18 months, the FCC’s guidance says.
When announcing the new rule, the FCC pointed to a White House determination that said consumer routers were part of recent major hacks tied to the Chinese government. The ban was still applied to all foreign-made routers.
Chinese router manufacturer TP-Link agreed the ban would apply to “virtually all” new models of routers companies would be looking to sell in the U.S., but argued it was a “positive step” to apply scrutiny across the industry.
“We are confident in the security of our supply chain,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “TP-Link has been committed to making further investments in America and has already been planning to establish U.S.-based manufacturing to complement our existing company-owned facilities in Vietnam. TP-Link is well-positioned – in fact, possibly better positioned than any of its competitors – to succeed under the new guidelines and maintain its position as the leading U.S. vendor of secure network devices.”
It’s not clear how long the conditional approval process will take, Heynan wrote. In the meantime, new router models will be slow to hit the U.S.
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