The US telecommunications regulator FCC has ordered devices from five Chinese companies to be banned from the US market. She justifies the step with the protection of national security.
The US government bans the sale and import of communication devices from Chinese smartphone manufacturers and network suppliers Huawei and ZTE. They posed an unacceptable risk to national security, the US telecommunications regulator FCC said on Friday.
“As a result of our order, no new Huawei or ZTE devices can be approved,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote on Twitter. It is also possible to revoke existing permits. It is the “first time in FCC history” that new devices have been banned due to national safety concerns.
Other companies are also affected
The decision comes as no surprise. US President Joe Biden last year sealed the exclusion of Huawei and ZTE network technology from the US market by law, thus continuing the policy of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump in the economic crime with China. The law had broad bipartisan support at the time. The FCC now had to vote on the corresponding order within a year in order for it to be implemented. The United States accuses Huawei of close ties to Chinese authorities and warns of espionage and sabotage. The company denies the allegations.
As president in 2019, during the smoldering trade conflict with China, Trump declared a national emergency in telecommunications and as a result put Huawei and numerous subsidiaries on a blacklist of companies. This meant that US companies were only allowed to do business with the Chinese company with a permit; As a result, Huawei was cut off from important US technology such as microchips. The Chinese Huawei competitor ZTE had previously been restricted.
The US sanctions also meant that Huawei had to do without pre-installed Google services on new smartphones. This left the Google Play Store for millions of Android apps and many popular apps like GMail and Google Maps only accessible via a web browser. Other popular apps were completely absent. With the development of a new HarmonyOS operating system, Huawei then tried to contain the damage that the US sanctions had done to the group’s smartphone business in particular.
In addition to Huawei and ZTE, the FCC’s order also affects devices from Hytera Communications as well as Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and Dahua Technology. “Even new devices from Dahua, Hikvision, or Hytera cannot be approved unless they assure the FCC that their devices will not be used for public safety, government security, or other national security purposes,” Carr wrote on twitter. Huawei and ZTE are already heavily affected by US sanctions.
