WASHINGTON, D.C.—Federal Communications Commission chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has announced a tentative agenda for the May Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, May 23, 2024 that include a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) designed to strengthen national security by cracking down on tech labs certifying RF equipment with ties to countries like China and Russia.
Other than this NPR, The FCC will take up a number of unspecified enforcement actions and a restricted adjudicatory matter from the Media Bureau.
The new NPR is part of an ongoing crackdown on the use of telecommunications equipment from China that has already seen a ban on equipment from Huawei and other Chinese vendors being used in U.S. networks.
To strengthen those nation security efforts, the FCC said it is now proposing to ban test and certification labs that have ties to countries on the “covered list”, which include the People’s Republic of China, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (China), Republic of Cuba (Cuba), Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran), Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Russian Federation (Russia), and others.
“The FCC’s equipment authorization program is tasked with ensuring that all of these devices available to American businesses and consumers comply with our rules regarding, among other things, interference, radio-frequency (RF) emissions, and hearing aid compatibility,” the agency said in the NPR. “To ensure the efficient and effective review of tens of thousands of equipment authorizations annually, the Commission delegates certain important responsibilities to telecommunications certification bodies (TCBs) and measurement facilities (test labs) with regard to implementing our equipment authorization program. Now, as part of ongoing efforts to promote national security and protect our nation’s communications equipment supply chain, the Commission has placed significant new national security related responsibilities on TCBs and test labs.”
“By establishing new equipment authorization program rules that prohibit authorization of communications equipment that has been determined to pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons, these entities now must help ensure that such prohibited equipment is kept out of our nation’s supply chain," the NPR said. "Further, these entities are entrusted with receiving and maintaining sensitive and proprietary information regarding communications equipment. In light of these new and ongoing responsibilities and the persistent and evolving threats posed by untrustworthy actors seeking, among other things, to compromise our networks and supply chains, today we seek to strengthen our requirements for and oversight of TCBs and test labs by proposing new rules that would help ensure the integrity of these entities for purposes of our equipment authorization program, better protect national security, and advance the Commission’s comprehensive strategy to build a more secure and resilient communications supply chain. It is vital that we ensure that these entities are not subject to influence or control by foreign adversaries or other untrustworthy actors that pose a risk to national security.”
More specifically, the NPR noted that "we propose to prohibit from recognition by the FCC and participation in our equipment authorization program, any TCB or test lab in which an entity identified on the Covered List has direct or indirect ownership or control, and prohibit reliance on or use of, for purposes of equipment authorization, any TCB or test lab that is directly or indirectly owned or controlled by any entity on the Covered List or by any third party in which an entity identified on the Covered List has any direct or indirect ownership or control. Considering our national security concerns about entities identified on the Covered List, we also direct the Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) to take swift action to suspend the recognition of any TCB or test lab directly or indirectly owned or controlled by entities identified on the Covered List, thereby preventing such entities from using their owned or controlled labs to undermine our current prohibition on Covered Equipment.”
The full document is available here.
