FCC faces USD3bn shortfall for Huawei/ZTE rip-and-replace scheme

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) faces a USD3 billion shortfall as it seeks to reimburse US operators who need to remove Huawei/ZTE equipment from their networks on national security grounds. As directed by the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, the FCC is taking steps to reimburse communications providers with ten million or fewer subscriptions to remove, replace and dispose of Chinese-built equipment. The reimbursement programme is being funded by a USD1.9 billion congressional appropriation, but ‘Priority 1 applicants’ (operators serving fewer than two million subscriptions) have submitted approximately USD4.640 billion in cost estimates that are reasonable and supported.