Last month, the FCC banned the sale of all new routers not made in the US. If a router already has FCC clearance to sell, sales will continue to be allowed, but in theory the new clearance is only for US-made routers. The text of the FCC’s announcement states that vulnerabilities in routers have enabled cyberattacks, including Salt Typhoon in 2024, so in the interest of locking all backdoors, the router supply chain must be fully secured.
In theory, all new routers had to be manufactured domestically, or manufacturers could seek “conditional approval,” which involves jumping through new hoops intended to prove that their manufacturer had plans to relocate to the U.S. According to a report from the Verge, there’s no indication that Netgear has done this. Gizmodo couldn’t find any.
For the record, the FCC says another company, Adtran Inc. A group of routers somehow earned the same discount. In contrast, Netgear’s more detailed version of this discount includes:
“Netgear, Inc.’s Nighthawk consumer mesh, mobile and standalone routers (R, RX, RAX, RS, MK, MR, M and MH series), Orbi consumer mesh, mobile and standalone routers (RBK, RBE, RBR, RBRE, LBR, LBK and CBK series), cable gateways (CAX series) and cable modems (CM series).”
This could potentially give Netgear a much wider loophole. It could continue to manufacture routers overseas – as apparently all consumer routers currently do – and could bring any new products to the US by applying one of the above labels.
But there’s nothing in Netgear’s flashy discount announcement about onshoring manufacturing, just a mention of Netgear being a “company founded and headquartered in the US.” And the section on the Netgear website about manufacturing still only says “We currently manufacture our consumer router products in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand, countries considered ally by the U.S. government.”
This isn’t the first surprising move by the FCC related to this router ban. Late last month, it added an expiration date for router security updates of March 1, 2027, which was intended to cover new routers, but was written in such a way as to deny security updates to current routers. The Technology Policy Institute, a think tank, wrote that “the ban creates the very vulnerabilities it claims to address.”
Gizmodo contacted the FCC and Netgear for clarity on why Netgear received this waiver, and specifically what would happen if it announced a reinstatement plan. We will update this article if we get any response.
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