FCC Expands Covered List Ban
The agency also granted another waiver under its router ban, as requests keep coming in
WASHINGTON, June 29, 2026 – The Federal Communications Commission is banning more Chinese networking gear from being imported to the U.S., the agency said Friday.
The FCC added Chinese firms like Huawei and ZTE to its covered list in 2022, meaning new telecom equipment from those companies couldn’t be imported and sold in the U.S.
On Friday, the agency extended that prohibition to gear from those companies that had previously been authorized before that 2022 ban. The move “is necessary to mitigate national security risks to the U.S. communications sector,” the agency wrote in its order.
The new ban applies to earlier versions of covered gear added to the agency’s list in 2024 or earlier. That doesn’t include drones or routers, both of which the FCC has expanded import bans on more recently.
Some gear from three companies is only banned for certain national security and “critical infrastructure” uses. The Friday order only applies to those companies’s previously authorized gear if it’s marketed for those purposes.
The order will take effect 10 days after its publication in the Federal Register. The FCC said the quick timeline was an effort to prevent suppliers from importing large amounts of covered gear before the deadline.
The FCC voted in April to propose preventing American telecom carriers from connecting to data centers and other equipment owned by covered list entities, something FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has supported for years. Some U.S. companies and trade groups worried that a broad interconnection ban could be disruptive.
Router ban
In March, the FCC added all new models of foreign-made Wi-Fi routers, meaning virtually all consumer routers, to its covered list. To get an exemption, companies must go to the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security with ownership information and plans to onshore some of their manufacturing.
The agencies have been granting those exemptions, including for major router manufacturers Netgear and Adtran. The FCC has also granted waivers on behalf of AT&T and the cable industry for their suppliers.
The carrier and NCTA say their suppliers would be hit with severe supply shortages if they couldn’t swap certain components in their FCC-approved router designs. They say AI companies are causing demand for memory to skyrocket.
On Friday, the FCC granted another such request on behalf of Verizon. Like in previous cases, the agency noted “unavoidable supply-chain shortages” which, “if not addressed, could cause meaningful disruptions in the availability of broadband equipment.”
The same day, two trade groups asked for the same waiver. NTCA and ACA Connects, which represent rural ISPs and smaller cable providers respectively, said their router manufacturers are seeing the same supply chain constraints.
“Expedited grant of this waiver is warranted to avoid unnecessary burdens and costs that would be caused by a shortage of authorized routers or an inability to make the modifications described herein without risk of violating Commission rules,” the groups wrote.
USTelecom, the major broadband trade group, also asked for a waiver on behalf of its suppliers on June 22.
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