“Telecommunications equipment made by untrusted vendors, including Huawei, is a threat to the security of the US and our allies,” Commented Jen Psaki, White House press secretary
The legislation that prevents s organisations considered to be a security risk from acquiring new telecom equipment licenses, was signed by United States President Joe Biden on 12th November, 2021. Besides eradication of chinese technological involvements in other parts of the sector, five Chinese companies, Huawei, ZTE, along with Hytera Communications and others were among these which got banned from being used extensively in the United States. The Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) identified and further ruled them out as a major threat to their national security.
This was also done as an attempt to not slowly remove Chinese products from the telecommunications sector but also as desperate attempt to introduced original American products and monopolise them further.
“The United States, without any evidence, still abuses national security and state power to suppress Chinese companies,” said Zhao Lijian, a renowned spokesperson at China’s foreign ministry, in October.
The FCC had specifically laid out various rules and assigned to them, an amount of $1.9 billion to adequately “rip and replace network equipment and services” from ZTE and Huawei. However, the estimate cost of successfully removing Chinese equipment such as these from American wireless networks has proved to be much costlier than what had been previously anticipated by the government. The Chairwoman of the FCC, Jessica Rosenworcel made a statement on how US carriers have asked for as high an amount as $5.6 billion in reimbursements to “rip and replace” i.e. strategically get rid of their infrastructure built upon the equipments of the infamous Huawei and ZTE.
The Federal Communications Commission accordingly voted to get rid of US carriers from making use of the Universal Service fund. This was to lessen the initial cost of purchasing and making use of networking equipment from “national security threat” posing companies in 2019. On the other hand, this was also done as a step towards ruling foreign based equipments and make space and demand for original, untampered provisions for the use of the population, whether old or new. The Secure and Trusted Telecommunications Networks Act, decreeing that these carriers replace equipment from manufacturers and other providers, was signed by Donald Trump in 2020.
Previously, $1.9 billion was assigned and set aside to cover reimbursements for the US Carriers to adequately carry out the getting rid of the foreign equipments and replacing them with their own. This was an initiative on the part of the FCC to appropriately establish a program to compensate smaller telecom operators for adequately replacing foreign equipment the law had considered a significant threat to their national security.
FCC chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel further commented that, “While we have more work to do to review these applications, I look forward to working with Congress to ensure that there is enough funding available for this program to advance Congress’s security goals and ensure that America will continue to lead the way on 5G security.”
The Federal Communications Commissions were abruptly sent as much as 181 applications for compensating and funding support before the filing window had gone on to close on the 28th of January, 2022. As noted earlier, the agency possesses only enough money to fulfil about a third of the requests it received.
It was later observed that the cost for the replacement of these equipments was not adequately estimated by neither of the partly. Some argue that the FCC had aptly assigned almost $2 billion to the US Carriers, who on the other hand had wrongfully demanded three times the amount. Contrastingly, some argue that funds assigned by FCC was never enough and tht US carriers rightfully demanded $5.6, which obviously the FCC does not possess.
Would it suffice for the carriers? Only time will tell.
