Windstream has confirmed that it has completed the removal of all Huawei equipment from its network. The telco notes that its network included Huawei gear acquired as part of its 2017 acquisition of EarthLink, adding that the prohibited equipment only represented a small fraction of its routing and transportation capability. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated the Chinese vendor as a national security threat in June 2020, meaning all US telcos were obligated to remove Huawei equipment from their networks.
As a federal contractor, Windstream implemented a multi-year engineering plan to remove this equipment in 2019, before the FCC made removal mandatory. By fall 2022, all Huawei equipment had been disconnected from Windstream’s network and was no longer in operation. The company removed the final inactive Huawei equipment from its network shelves in March 2023.