Biden signs the Secure Equipment Act of 2021, denying FCC licenses to national security threats, effectively banning Huawei and ZTE network equipment in the US
Campbell Kwan / ZDNet :
Context & Ripple Effects
The signing caps a three-year legislative ratchet: Trump's defense bill restricting Huawei and ZTE components in 2018 was followed by the House passing the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act in 2019, then the FCC formally designating both vendors as national security risks in mid-2020 and cutting them off from federal subsidy purchases.
What changes with the Secure Equipment Act is the mechanism: instead of subsidy rules and procurement bans, the FCC can now simply deny equipment licenses to any vendor on its threat list — closing the last legal path for new Huawei and ZTE network gear to enter US networks.
First-order effects
- Huawei and ZTE lose FCC equipment authorization for new network hardware, meaning US carriers and network operators can no longer lawfully deploy their radio access and core equipment going forward.
Second-order effects
- The license-denial template gives the FCC a reusable tool beyond telecom: within a year it extends the same national-security logic to camera makers Hikvision and Dahua and radio maker Hytera, as the agency had already signaled with its plan to block all new Huawei and ZTE device sales.
Third-order effects
- US telecom infrastructure structurally decouples from Chinese vendors — procurement, subsidies, licensing, and now imports all point the same direction — pushing carriers toward a narrower set of Western and Korean suppliers and inviting reciprocal restrictions on US equipment abroad.
The trend: US telecom policy is converging on a single instrument — the FCC threat list plus license denial — that converts ad hoc vendor bans into standing infrastructure policy.