After Netgear, the Federal Communications Commission has decided to also save Amazon routers, thus avoiding de facto monopoly situations but making even more evident the leap forward made, evidently, without considering the consequences. But let’s go in order.
THE FACTS AND THE ROUTER BAN IMPOSED BY THE USA
In recent weeks, the Federal Communications Commission suddenly banned all routers developed outside the 50 American states. “Malicious actors exploited security flaws in foreign-made routers to attack American homes, disrupt networks, enable espionage, and facilitate intellectual property theft,” the FCC’s justification. In particular, the federal agency cited three cyberattacks, named Volt, Flax, and Salt Typhoon, directed against U.S. infrastructures between 2024 and 2025 and, according to the respective investigations, carried out by actors linked to the Chinese government.
Only afterwards, however, did the federal agency realize that currently there are no U.S. companies that manufacture their products one hundred percent in the USA, as the very strict emergency regulation would require. And so relaxations began, which however did not affect the regulatory framework – proving that, as several observers have argued, the new law would have mainly economic purposes, forcibly imposing on high-tech industries to invest in the States to build their supply chain there, from scratch – but temporary permits that allow extraordinary continued production abroad.
AFTER NETGEAR, GREEN LIGHT ALSO FOR AMAZON ROUTERS
The first company to benefit from the temporary exemption until October 1, 2027, was Netgear: a decision that in the U.S. industry press raised more questions than approval, since if the decision was truly linked to unspecified national security reasons it was hard to understand how exceptions to the rule could be made. Not only that: following this decision, Netgear, which has much of its supply chain in Asia, would have found itself in a privileged position compared to rivals cut off from the market by law.
Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission has also given the green light to Amazon, which will be subject to the same temporary favorable regime: it will thus be able to continue selling models such as Eero, Eero Pro, Eero Max, Eero PoE, Eero Outdoor, and Eero Signal on the U.S. market for the next year and a half, after which any equipment containing non-U.S. components will be banned.
“We are pleased to announce that the United States government has recognized eero (FCC approval list fcc.gov) as a trusted and secure router provider,” the comment from the brand linked to the e-commerce giant founded by Jeff Bezos.
THE FCC INTENSIFIES THE FIGHT AGAINST NETWORK EQUIPMENT
Meanwhile, the FCC has further expanded the range of equipment that will face the same territorial restrictions so far applied to routers to include portable Wi-Fi hotspots and LTE/5G CPE devices. Connectivity in the United States, in short, must be made in the USA, without exceptions. Until the next exemption.
