Groups Oppose FCC 'Covered List' Update Based on BIS' Connected-Vehicle Rule
The Consumer Technology Association, CTIA and other groups opposed an FCC proposal to update its “covered list” of unsecure companies to reflect a January finding by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security on connected vehicles (see 2505270059). Commenters said the FCC should let BIS complete its work before considering revising regulations. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has long raised concerns about Chinese involvement in U.S. networks and in March launched a Council for National Security at the agency (see 2503130012).
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BIS found “that the provision of certain connected vehicle hardware or software by certain Chinese- or Russian-controlled entities poses an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security and the safety and security of U.S. persons.” Comments were due Friday in docket 18-89 and posted last week and Monday.
The notice “proposes an unprecedented and unexpected application of the Connected Vehicles Rule to the Commission’s equipment authorization process via ambiguous additions to the FCC’s Covered List,” CTA warned. Moving forward before BIS has “fully scoped and implemented” its rule “would cause significant confusion, leading to negative unintended consequences in the consumer technology and automotive markets, and could undermine the overall national security objective to efficiently and effectively shift supply chains away from untrusted vendors.”
CTIA encouraged the commission “to align its efforts with ongoing work at BIS" by timing any addition to the covered list "with BIS’s full implementation of the Connected Vehicles Rule, to include the issuance of clarifying advisory opinions, as well as general and specific authorizations.” Without “clear entity names on the Covered List, manufacturers -- especially small and medium-sized manufacturers -- would face particular challenges in determining which entities throughout their global supply chains would be disqualified for equipment authorization,” CTIA said. The group noted that software raises “unique challenges, including with respect to components from global open-source libraries.”
Qualcomm said that “at a minimum,” the FCC shouldn’t act “until BIS has had the time to issue clarifying advisory opinions, and impacted parties are able to seek and secure necessary general and specific authorizations.” Providing time “to consider how best to add connected vehicles products and/or producers to the Covered List would be in the public interest and enable the FCC to most effectively carry out its duties under the Secure Networks Act and Secure Equipment Act,” the company said.
Autos Drive America, which represents international automakers, said its members worked with BIS on the development of the rule. Adding broad product categories “to the Covered List would impose FCC-related restrictions that do not account for the nuanced exemptions, general authorizations, and specific authorizations provided for in the BIS Rule,” the group said. Expanding the application of the covered list “could result in technology restrictions far broader than those deemed necessary by BIS, creating significant uncertainty and potential harm to the automotive industry.”
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents companies in the U.S. industry, also raised concerns, saying that the proposal “risks actively harming the policy goals the Trump Administration seeks to achieve.” Updating the list “to include the broad product categories identified in the BIS Rule would impose" restrictions with "wide-ranging impacts that would be at variance with carefully defined limitations, critically important implementation timelines, and the general and specific authorizations and advisory opinions that BIS will issue in the future.”
The Intelligent Transportation Society of America said the FCC proposal won’t make the information and communications technology and services (ICTS) market more secure. BIS has yet “to identify specific communications equipment or entities as risks themselves.” The authorization mechanisms that BIS established “demonstrate that BIS’s determination of actual national security vulnerability cannot universally be applied to ICTS equipment,” the group said. “The Commission’s proposal appears to neglect that nuance, and instead recommends a broad, inflexible categorization of total risk on all ICTS equipment with any link to China and Russia, circumventing and undermining the authorization process that BIS has established.”
The 5G Automotive Association also urged caution. Using the BIS rules to amend the covered list now “will inevitably lead to FCC restrictions that are broader than those that BIS ultimately puts into place after it assesses requests to grant authorization for certain equipment transactions,” it said. “Getting ahead of BIS would undermine BIS’s carefully considered and ongoing phased-in implementation timeline and would unnecessarily disrupt the U.S. automotive industry.”