A federal appeals court last week declined China Telecom’s emergency bid to halt a U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order withdrawing its capability to provide telecommunications services in the United States.
According to a Reuters report, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Columbia rejected the bid previously filed by the local branch of China Telecom to temporarily block the FCC order, which takes effect in early January.
Following this legal decision, China Telecom said that without a temporary halt to the FCC action, it “will be forced to cease significant operations, irreparably harming its business, reputation, and relationships.”
In October, the FCC issued an order which effectively ended China Telecom Americas’ ability to provide domestic interstate and international telecommunications services within the U.S. China Telecom immediately launched a legal appeal against the ban.
“Promoting national security is an integral part of the Commission’s responsibility to advance the public interest, and today’s action carries out that mission to safeguard the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure from potential security threats,” FCC said.
The FCC said that China Telecom Americas, a U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned enterprise, is subject to “exploitation, influence, and control” by the Chinese government and is highly likely to be forced to comply with Chinese government requests without sufficient legal procedures subject to independent judicial oversight.
“Given the changed national security environment with respect to China since the Commission authorized China Telecom Americas to provide telecommunications services in the United States almost two decades ago, the Order finds that China Telecom Americas’ ownership and control by the Chinese government raise significant national security and law enforcement risks by providing opportunities for China Telecom Americas, its parent entities, and the Chinese government to access, store, disrupt, and/or misroute U.S. communications, which in turn allow them to engage in espionage and other harmful activities against the United States,” the FCC had said.
According to a recent report by the South China Morning Post, China Telecom Americas has been operating in the U.S. for almost 20 years. The company has said its target customers are “the more than 4 million Chinese Americans; the 2 million Chinese tourists visiting the United States annually; the 300,000 Chinese students at US colleges; and the more than 1,500 Chinese enterprises in America”.
In April 2020, the FCC warned it might shut down U.S. operations of three state-controlled Chinese telecommunications companies, citing national security risks, including China Telecom Americas as well as China Unicom Americas, Pacific Networks Corp and its wholly owned subsidiary ComNet (USA) after U.S. agencies had raised national security concerns.
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