(RoyalPatriot.com )- Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that two additional Chinese companies have been added to the list of communications equipment suppliers rated as a threat to US national security.
In a statement last Tuesday, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced that the FCC has taken further action to prevent China’s Pacific Network Corporation and its subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC, along with China Unicom (Americas) from providing service in the United States by adding them to the FCC’s “Covered List.”
These companies now join Huawei, ZTE Corporation, radio-comms vendor Hytera, video surveillance systems Hikvision and Dahua, and telecom companies China Mobile and China Telecom, who already appear on the FCC’s “Covered List.”
Also included on the “Covered List” is the Russia-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.
Companies placed on the FCC’s “Covered List” are believed to be “subject to the exploitation, influence and control of the Chinese government, and the national security risks associated with such exploitation, influence, and control.”
As such, they have been deemed an unacceptable risk to US national security.
China’s Pacific Network Corporation’s ComNet and China Unicom had already been banned from operating in the United States. By labeling them as security threats and placing them on the “Covered List,” the FCC is going the extra step of saying doing business with them poses a threat to national security.
According to the FCC, ComNet’s interconnections to US telecom networks and customers could facilitate economic espionage and intelligence collection, “or otherwise provide a strategic capability to target, collect, alter, block, and re-route network traffic.”
By placing these companies on the “Covered List,” US buyers who use federal subsidies like the FCC’s $5 billion Universal Service Fund are prohibited from doing business with the companies.
