FCC Bans Import of NEW Consumer Routers Not Made in USA
It turns out that there are NO – ZERO – consumer grade routers made in the United States. The exact details of this are a bit mushy like many things coming out of DC at the moment, but this looks like new FCC type rating approvals have been shut down.
The likely impact of this is that businesses like ISPs and phone companies that are dependent on these (mostly) Chinese routers will attempt to “stock up” causing a similar run on the supply chain to what we have already seen with disk drives and memory.
Here is a link to the actual FCC order.
The White House has two agendas here.
One is to force companies to build this hardware in the US. Some companies will do that. If they do, they will do that with the bare minimum of US labor using robots instead, so this should have almost no effect on employment. The problem with that is the order also effects the supply chain for the routers, so if the components are not made in the US, even if the router is assembled here, that does not meet the requirements. If companies have to move the entire supply chain here, that will either take years or companies will abandon the consumer market as not profitable.
For consumers, this means higher prices. Since routers are often bundled into the cost of your Internet service, that cost will likely go up if this is enforced.
The second agenda, and we have already seen this, so while some people may object to me saying this, is to solicit “donations” to the administration.
The order allows for exemptions if the DoD or DHS find that such devices don’t pose an unacceptable risk. That is a loophole that you could sail a container ship through. Would I be surprised if some company makes, say, a fifty million dollar donation to the president’s ballroom project that their products would, likely, no longer represent an unacceptable risk. I absolutely do believe that might happen.
Small businesses likely use Internet routers that the FCC would classify as consumer grade, so while this might not affect routers that, say, IBM buys, it likely will impact routers that your local retail shop buys.
China currently makes about 50 percent of “consumer grade” routers.
Credit: Tech Crunch and others
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