News: The FCC Is Planning to Block China Mobile in the United States

2019-04-18 - 1 minute read

While the Chinese state-owned telecom company China Mobile doesn’t currently offer phone service in the U.S., it has been trying to gain access to the U.S. market for years. However, in an article in the Washington Post, Brian Fung reports that U.S. officials are trying to block China Mobile from operating in the U.S. The cited reason behind this decision is that the firm is a spying risk.

If approved, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plan would prevent China Mobile from providing American customers with international phone service. The FCC’s decision on this issue could result in China retaliating against U.S. carriers partnered with Chinese providers.

Photo by Sean Davis and licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

This is only the latest in warnings and policy proposals that the current administration has issued regarding Chinese technology firms. R. David Edelman commented on this, stating that “Trump’s team is making central to their case that not just ZTE, but Huawei and China Mobile are all instrumentalities of the Chinese state…And it’s shifting the burden back onto those companies to prove they’re immune from Chinese interference — which might well be impossible.”

Find out more by reading the full article…