The US Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday said that it had rejected a petition from ZTE Corp (中興) asking the agency to reconsider its decision designating the Chinese company as a US national security threat to communications networks.
The FCC in June announced that it had formally designated China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and ZTE as threats, a declaration that bars US firms from tapping a US$8.3 billion US government fund to purchase equipment from the firms.
ZTE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, the FCC said that it was extending until Dec.11 the time frame to respond to Huawei’s petition “to fully and adequately consider the voluminous record.”
US President Donald Trump in May last year signed an executive order barring US firms from using telecommunications equipment made by companies posing national security risks and his administration added Huawei to its trade blacklist.
At its next meeting on Dec. 10, the FCC is to vote on rules to help carriers remove and replace equipment from companies posing security risks from their networks.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai last week said that the commission would take up two unspecified national security matters at the meeting.
The FCC in April disclosed that it might shut down the US operations of three state-controlled Chinese telecoms: China Telecom Corp (中國電信), China Unicom Ltd (中國聯通) and Pacific Networks Corp (太平洋網絡), and its subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC.
The nearly 20-year-old authorizations allow Chinese telecoms to provide interconnection services for phone calls between the US and other countries.
Last week, the FCC said that it was reclaiming International Signaling Point Codes assigned to China Telecom, as it found that “the three codes are no longer in use.”
China Telecom did not immediately comment.
Last month, the FCC asked the US Department of Justice to adjudicate on whether China Unicom’s US operations pose security risks.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS