National Security NPRM 4-0 FCC OK Expected
The FCC is expected to approve 4-0 an NPRM next week proposing to bar certification of equipment from companies found to be a national security risk. No lobbying meetings were reported on the draft, per docket 21-232. FCC officials said CTA is starting to make the rounds among commissioner aides to discuss the item, which could lead to a few tweaks. Wednesday, Huawei executives criticized the proposal.
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“It does seem to be a stretch” to use this program “to block companies by name,” Dennis Amari, Huawei USA vice president-federal and regulatory affairs, told reporters Wednesday. “That makes absolutely no sense.” ZTE and the Chinese Embassy didn’t comment.
The FCC has taken numerous actions to improve security of U.S. networks, said Jeffrey Westling, R Street technology and innovation policy fellow. The concern is “ensuring that the FCC doesn't use security as a guise for protectionism,” he said: “The commission must be careful to limit the applicability of the restrictions to those companies that are truly security threats.” The covered list is probably the right approach, he said.
Security is “top of mind” for the Telecommunications Industry Association and the item is “a natural, logical outgrowth” of the proceeding requiring providers remove equipment from their networks, said Senior Director-Government Affairs Colin Andrews. TIA supports removing the gear from all networks, not just USF-funded ones, he said: “This seems to check all of the boxes of removing this equipment from any U.S. networks.”
The right approach for the administration is “not barring individual companies by name, but rather imposing restrictions on companies that do not follow certain standards of behavior,” emailed the American Enterprise Institute's Zack Cooper.
John Suffolk, Huawei global cybersecurity and privacy officer, told reporters that “we are impacted by the inability to spend money with American chip companies.” The Chinese chip market is about $400 billion yearly, he said. Blocking chip sales to China is a “policy misstep,” Suffolk said. “China will not sit on its hands, and you wouldn’t expect it to,” he said. “China will invent technology; it may not be as good as what we can buy from America,” he said, but China “will catch up quite quickly.”