On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department and other federal agencies requested the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revoke the authorization of China Telecom (Americas) Corp’s for providing international telecommunication services within the United States. China Telecom is basically a U.S. subsidiary of a telecommunications company that’s state-owned by the People’s Republic of China. The FCC had been asked to review approvals of China Unicom and China Telecom last year by two senators for being able to operate in the United States. Last May, the FCC had unanimously voted to deny China Mobile Ltd, another Chinese telecommunications company owned by the state.
They hadn’t been given permission to provide their services in the United States due to the risk of the Chinese government using this approval for conducting espionage against the government. At that time, the FCC had announced that they were ‘looking’ at the licenses of China Unicom and China Telecom. All the allegations were rejected by China Telecoms (Americas) and it stated that it had been transparent and cooperative with all regulators. The company made a statement in which they said that they had actually gone beyond what was asked to show how they operate and had provided the highest international standards to their customers.
It also said that they would share additional information for addressing any concerns and supporting their position. On Friday, China’s foreign ministry said that Beijing was ‘firmly opposed’ to any action taken against China Telecom by the United States government. Spokesman for the foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian said that they wanted the United States to respect market economy principles and to put a stop to its practices of politicizing economic issues and generalizing national security and to not oppress Chinese companies unjustifiably. U.S. agencies have put Chinese telecommunications companies and networks have put under increased scrutiny.
A spokeswoman for the FCC said that they were considering the issue and asked the executive branch agencies to provide input that would be carefully reviewed. The agencies include Commerce, State, Defense, the United States Trade Representative and Homeland Security. All of them have cited law enforcement and national security risks associated with the operations of China Telecom. These include concerns that China Telecom could be under the control of the Chinese government or be under their influence. The agencies also added that the operations of China Telecom in the U.S. could enable Chinese government entities to misroute or disrupt U.S. communications and engage in economic espionage.
In September, similar concerns had been raised by U.S. Republican Senator Tom Cotton and Democratic leader Charles Schumer. They stated that China Unicom and China Telecom had access to the fiber optic cables, telephone lines, satellites and cellular networks, which could give China the opportunity of targeting the communications of the people, the U.S. government and American businesses. On Wednesday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit was given permission by the FCC to use part of an Asia-U.S. undersea telecommunications cable, but not the portion connected to Hong Kong as this could jeopardize national security.
You must be logged in to post a comment.