Will Sprint be forced to use US-made equipment?

TOPICS:

Will Federal regulators hold up the Sprint deal unless Sprint uses only American-made equipment? It’s possible. As a condition of deal, Softbank may only be allowed to buy Sprint if the FCC can mandate that certain Chinese equipment may not be used.

This story comes to us from The Verge and their sources claim that Softbank uses ZTE and Huawei network equipment in its systems and apparently a Congressional report says that those companies’ equipment is a security risk. So, the US government may want to mandate that Sprint continue to use switching equipment from more reliable vendors.

On the other hand, the issue of trade with China is very delicate and it’s possible that such a prohibition wouldn’t make it through, in fear of irritating the Chinese government.

Still, in light of the recent cybersecurity issues this week, everyone has to be a little careful.

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.