NB BUREAU
United States on Friday added China Telecom Corp and China Mobile International USA to its list of communications equipment and service providers as posing a threat to national security under a 2019 law aimed at protecting US communications networks.
According to the reports published by the Global Times, the US Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau also added Russia’s AO Kaspersky Lab to its list of communications equipment and service providers deemed a threat to national securit.
This is for the first time that US has included a Russian entity to a list dominated by Chinese telecommunications firms Last year, in March, the US regulator added five Chinese companies to their list and they are Huawei Technologies Co, ZTE Corp, Hytera Communications Corp, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co and Dahua Technology Co.
It “will continue to update the list as other communications equipment and services meet the criteria under the law,” FCC press release added.
“For Chinese firms, being included on the list has a limited impact due to the tiny business scale,” Xiang Ligang, director-general of
the Information Consumption Alliance, an industry association was saying as quoted by Global Times.
The FCC, on March 16, decided to cancel the right of the Chinese telecom company, Pacific Networks Corp and its wholly-owned
subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC to provide relevant telecom services in the US, according to Global Times.
(With inputs from media agencies)
