FCC Investigating Chinese Telecom Providers
The agency's chairman alleged some of the firms were operating in the U.S.
Jake Neenan
WASHINGTON, March 21, 2025 – The Federal Communications Commission is investigating its list of blacklisted Chinese telecom firms, the agency announced Friday.
Under a 2019 law, companies including Huawei, ZTE, and others are blocked from selling new products or services in the country and from being vendors for federally funded projects. The agency is also reimbursing smaller providers for tearing out network gear from the companies, known as covered entities.
“We have reason to believe that, despite those actions, some or all of these Covered List entities are trying to make an end run around those FCC prohibitions by continuing to do business in America on a private or ‘unregulated’ basis,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement. “The FCC, working through our new Council on National Security and in coordination with partners across the Federal government, will identify the scope of their ongoing activities and move quickly to close any loopholes that have permitted untrustworthy, foreign adversary state-backed actors to skirt our rules.”
The agency said it was gathering information on U.S. operations of covered entities, “as well as information about other companies that may be aiding their operations here,” through letters of inquiry and at least one subpoena.
Huawei and ZTE, two of the biggest entities on the covered list, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Carr wrote the FCC chapter of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s playbook for a conservative administration, and he wrote there about wanting to close the “unregulated end run” the agency is currently targeting.
He alleged one firm “continues to provide services to data centers by offering the services on a private or ‘unregulated’ basis,” and said the FCC could “prohibit any regulated carrier from interconnecting with an insecure provider.”
Carr’s effort had bipartisan support within the agency.
“I support any step that builds on the successful and bipartisan effort of previous FCC administrations to ensure that companies posing a national security risk are removed from our networks,” Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez posted Friday on X.
After months of pushing Congress on the issue, the agency secured in December an extra $3 billion to fund the removal of covered list equipment from rural networks. The Rip and Replace program, as it’s known, reimburses smaller providers for the work, but the agency didn’t have enough money to pay back all its participants, leaving networks with aging gear and replacement deadlines they couldn’t meet.
The money came from the Treasury, with an upcoming spectrum auction set to pay the money back.
In another bipartisan effort to target Chinese firms, the FCC last year asked for input on a proposal to ban labs affiliated with covered entities from the agency’s equipment testing program, but didn’t officially institute the measure. The labs certify that new devices meet required standards.
