The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take action to promote national security and public safety and revoke China Telecom Corp’s authorization to provide the US with international telecommunications services. The move is on the behalf of the Trump administration’s new Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector, which includes the Attorney General and Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense.
The committee, which is informally known as Team Telecom, supervises foreign telecom FCC licenses. The request to ban China Telecom from the US, according to the Attorney General William Barr, is due to the fact that the organization is a national security risk, as the telecom is vulnerable to exploitation, influence, and control by the PRC government.
