US instructs rural carriers how to apply for funding to remove Huawei and ZTE telecoms equipment

Rural telecommunications carriers in the US were given instructions on Monday on how to apply for part of US$1.9 billion the federal government has allocated to replace any equipment their networks use from the Chinese telecoms suppliers Huawei Technologies and ZTE.

The legal agreement on Friday in the high-profile fraud case against Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, may have helped reduce US-Chinese tensions. But it did little to slow the purge of Chinese telecoms equipment from US systems that Washington has sought in recent years; one part of that campaign, the so-called “rip and replace” reimbursement fund, will begin accepting applications on October 29.

In an online meeting on Monday, the Federal Communications Commission told those carriers that the application window has been extended to January 14, 2022. The labour costs the carriers incur in replacing the equipment may now also be eligible for refunds.

“Americans rely on their communications network for everything from work, to health care, to education, to entertainment, to staying connected with friends and family,” Kris Monteith, head of the agency’s Wireline Competition Bureau, noted. “However, these benefits are only available if our networks are secure.”

The rip-and-replace programme, she said, would “go a long way towards mitigating the risks that currently exist via Huawei and ZTE equipment and services”.

The FCC first designated Huawei and ZTE as national security threats in November 2019. In March 2020, then-president Donald Trump signed a law that prohibited American carriers from using federal subsidies to buy network equipment from Chinese telecoms firms that had been deemed security threats.