The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it could ban three major Chinese telecom companies from operating data centers in the United States as part of a crackdown against Beijing.
An FCC public notice released on April 9 highlighted Chinese-linked telecom firms as a key national security concern.
The FCC said it has “tentatively ” concluded it should prohibit U.S. and other telecommunications carriers operating in the United States from interconnecting with companies on the “Covered List,” including major state-linked Chinese operators China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom.
All three operators have already faced restrictions or license revocations in the United States in recent years.
The FCC said it was also looking into prohibiting interconnection with any facilities, including Points of Presence (PoPs) and data centers, owned or operated by entities identified on the Covered List.
According to CloudDNS, a PoP is a physical access point that connects networks, enabling efficient data exchange between them. The agency also said it was considering extending the ban to some affiliates of companies on the national security list.
The FCC could also prohibit telecommunications carriers from interconnecting with companies that have installed equipment from companies on the list, including Huawei.
The FCC will vote on the proposal at its April 30 meeting.
The FCC said on April 8 that it also wanted to bar all Chinese labs from testing electronic devices such as smartphones, cameras, and computers for use in the United States. Last year, it banned testing of U.S. electronics by labs owned or controlled by the Chinese regime, which led to 23 labs being barred.
The FCC says about 75 percent of all electronics are tested in labs in China.
It also banned all imports of foreign-made commercial routers in March. That decision followed a March 20 report by an executive branch interagency body with national security expertise. The report found commercial routers, the boxes used in homes to connect computers, phones, and other smart devices to the internet, posed an unacceptable risk to the United States.
Last year, the FCC banned all new models of foreign-made drones because of national security concerns, a move that will shut out Chinese drone manufacturers DJI and Autel from the U.S. market
The FCC said in a Dec. 22 public notice that its decision was made after obtaining results from an executive-branch interagency review convened by the White House, which concluded that foreign drones and related critical components pose “unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons.”
“I welcome this Executive Branch national security determination, and I am pleased that the FCC has now added foreign drones and related components, which pose an unacceptable national security risk, to the FCC’s Covered List,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement at the time.
In October 2025, the agency took the initial step to revoke HKT (International) Ltd’s authority to provide international and domestic telecom services to and within the United States.
It said that HKT is affiliated with a Chinese Communist Party-controlled entity, namely, China Unicom (Americas), that is already listed on the FCC’s Covered List due to national security determinations.
“The FCC will continue to safeguard America’s networks against penetration from foreign adversaries, like China,” it said in a statement at the time.
Dorothy Li, Frank Fang, Jill McLaughlin, and Reuters contributed to this report.
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