Conditional Waivers to U.S. Foreign Router Ban Begin Trickling in, Allaying Fears of Wider Market Disruption

On March 23, 2026 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) added foreign-produced consumer Wi-Fi routers to its Covered List of communications equipment and services identified as posing a risk to U.S. national security, effectively banning imports of all new Wi-Fi router models except for those that were granted a conditional approval from either the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or the Department of War (DoW).

Not only did the move catch many in the industry off guard, but the announcement itself was devoid of details, leaving the ecosystem in the dark as to the extent of the policy updates’ impact on the Wi-Fi router market. Perhaps the gravest omissions were the lack of guidance on how the FCC defined a consumer router, whether conditional approvals had to be sought for every single Stock Keeping Unit (SKU), and if currently deployed routers could still receive firmware updates.

Clarity for the industry finally came on May 12, 2026, when the FCC published comprehensive FAQs for the Covered List update. This outlined that consumer routers effectively encompassed all Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) used by the public (inclusive of both Internet Service Provider (ISP) and retail routers, alongside Mobile Broadband (MBB) equipment), that entities could receive conditional approvals for an entire class/series of routers, and that firmware updates for existing equipment was, in fact, allowed.

Yet, the most proactive vendors didn’t wait for this direction from the FCC. As early as April 14, both NETGEAR and Adtran received condition exemptions for their latest products through October 1, 2027. This was followed by waivers for select eero equipment on April 22, for Calix equipment on May 6, and for Nokia’s upcoming Wi-Fi 8 router on May 15. The speed with which these vendors were granted conditional approvals reflects the fact that they are all, with the exception of Nokia, headquartered in the United States, and that they all manufacture at least a significant portion of their equipment (if not a majority) in North America.

Over the coming months, expect further exemptions to be granted for other companies that also demonstrate a commitment to expand their U.S. operations. This ABI Insight deciphers the motivations and objectives of the foreign router ban, reveals how the Covered List has been repurposed for the initiative, and provides foresight on how the new policies will impact ecosystem vendors and the broader industry.

This is not the first time that the FCC’s Covered List has been leveraged to restrict the importation of communications equipment and services into the United States on national security grounds. The origins of the FCC’s Covered List can be traced back to the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, introduced in President Trump’s first term. The stated aim of this act was to eliminate the use of communications equipment or services in the United States that were deemed to threaten U.S. national security or the safety of its citizens. This was to be achieved through blanket prohibitions on importing goods and services from companies identified as posing a national security risk, and through the instigation of a program that would fund the replacement of existing deployments of communications infrastructure from these suspect companies with that of trusted suppliers. It’s worth highlighting that, in contrast to the recent foreign router ban, at its inception, the Covered List was designed to target individual companies, not product classes.

The FCC was responsible for judging which companies presented an unacceptable level of risk, and the act required the organization to make its decision by March 12, 2021. On the day of the deadline, the FCC published the names of the five companies it was blacklisting in its new Covered List, and all covered products from these five entities, their subsidiaries, and close affiliates were immediately banned in the United States. Although the act did not specifically pinpoint China as the primary national security threat, all of the five covered companies—Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, and Dahua—originate from China. Ironically, the publication deadline fell less than a week before the first high-level meeting between the United States and China of the Biden administration, which further reinforced the notion that China was the target of the Covered List.

Throughout the remainder of the Biden administration, a handful of additional communications and cybersecurity companies were added to the covered list, all of which, excluding Kaspersky, were based in Mainland China. With advent of the second Trump term in early 2025, there was an expectation that the list might be swiftly enlarged with the names of more Chinese companies, with many anticipating that large Chinese vendors of Wi-Fi equipment, such as TP-Link, would be singled out and included on the list. Yet, this never occurred.

Instead, under the new Trump-appointed Chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, the organization has taken a distinctly different approach. As opposed to  targeting individual Chinese companies for blanket bans, the Covered List has now shifted to restricting all imports of specific product types on national security grounds. This began with the addition of all foreign-produced Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) and critical components (with a few exceptions) to the Covered List on December 22, 2025. Then, on March 23, 2026, the FCC updated the Covered List to include all foreign-made consumer routers. The justification for doing so was, in the eyes of the FCC, that foreign-produced routers represented a critical supply chain vulnerability and a severe cybersecurity risk.

At first glance, this latest update to the Covered List appears to signal the end of the road for foreign-made routers in the United States. But upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the restrictions are significantly less onerous than they seem. It’s worth paying attention to the following:

• Previously Approved Models Are Exempt: When the Covered List was first introduced, telecommunications equipment from the listed companies was considered such a security threat that a “rip and replace” program was implemented to remove their infrastructure from U.S. telecommunications networks. In contrast, this latest update to the Covered List explicitly provides a carve-out for models previously approved by the FCC. This means that not only are all currently deployed Wi-Fi routers unaffected, but all previously approved models can be imported into the United States and sold without restriction. Notably, many of TP-Link’s most advanced routers already have FCC approval, including the recently released high-end Archer BE700, which is one of the most powerful Wi-Fi 7 routers on the market.
• Only Select Market Segments Are Restricted: The new policies apply exclusively to consumer-grade equipment, likely reflecting the fact that many of the world’s leading enterprise equipment vendors are actually headquartered in the United States (e.g., Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)). That said, the enterprise carve-out weakens the justification for the ban, especially given that the supply chains of the American enterprise vendors are arguably no less globalized than those of the consumer-grade router vendors with equipment that is subject to the new policies. Furthermore, there is no clear dividing line between what is considered to be consumer-grade equipment and what is classed as enterprise-grade. If the rules remain as they currently stand, it would be possible for a foreign vendor (including TP-Link) to get FCC approval for an “enterprise” router that could, presumably, still be sold directly to the consumer.
• A Clear Route for Waivers Has Been Outlined: If a vendor’s equipment is deemed to be foreign-made (determined by a good-faith self-assessment), it is possible to submit a request for a conditional approval for importation from the DHS or the DoW. If granted, then an individual router, or a class of routers, will be granted an exemption to all restrictions for a specified period of time (all conditional approvals issued, so far, extend until October 2027). Despite concerns around the severe disruption that the new policies would cause, it was always clear from the previous example of the ban on UASs and critical components that the FCC would be quick to issue conditional approvals. In the case of UASs and critical components, following the addition of this entire product category (with a few exceptions) to the Covered List on December 22, 2025, the first wave of conditional approvals for specific companies arrived exactly 90 days later, on March 17, 2026.

By designing the policies with numerous exemptions and a relatively straight-forward waiver process, the overall impact on the U.S. Wi-Fi infrastructure industry will be significantly less severe than the many sensationalized headlines, which accompanied the original March announcement of the restrictions, would suggest. Given that the United States does not possess the domestic Wi-Fi router manufacturing capacity to satisfy market demand, the low margins on Wi-Fi router equipment make it uneconomical to produce the equipment in the United States, and limiting U.S. consumer access to advanced foreign Wi-Fi routers would directly hinder the FCC’s broader mission to improve high-speed Internet access across the United States, it is likely that the FCC will instruct the DHS and DoW to grant exemptions to all vendors that can demonstrate that their supply chains are not dependent on Mainland Chinese manufacturing and have firmware that is not derived from Chinese-origin platforms.

The focus on Chinese exposure is key because although the Covered List has shifted from targeting specific Chinese companies to targeting entire product classes, the underlying motive remains the removal of Chinese equipment. The difference in approach is merely that whereas the FCC previously proactively identified individual companies to ban, the FCC is now casting a wide net, and then carving-out individual exemptions for those that can prove they are not a security risk due to their origins in China or their high level of exposure to the market. This prevents the use by Chinese companies of subsidiaries, shell companies, or even partnerships to circumvent importation restrictions. The use of conditional approvals also grants the FCC greater powers to coerce vendors in the industry because, by their very definition, they can be revoked at any point.

The obvious winners of the new policies are those with global headquarters in the United States and/or a significant North American manufacturing presence. All the waiver recipients to date—namely NETGEAR, Adtran, eero, Calix, and Nokia—fit this profile. Yet, this does not mean that other foreign vendors that lack North American manufacturing will universally be barred from entry into the U.S. market. The reality is that most of the major Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)/Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) supplying the U.S. market commenced their migration away from Mainland Chinese manufacturing and component suppliers over half a decade ago, spurred by intensifying global scrutiny on Mainland Chinese suppliers and the logistical paralysis caused by the prolonged “Zero-Covid” lockdowns in the country between 2020 and 2022.

Other factors incentivizing Wi-Fi router vendors to relocate away from Mainland China are the rising cost of production in Mainland China and the withdrawal of government subsidies for products now considered to be of low strategic value. This has driven the rapid emergence of new global Wi-Fi router manufacturing hubs, notably Vietnam and Mexico. The inclusion of Wi-Fi routers on the Covered List will accelerate and cement this trend among vendors serving the U.S. market, as they strengthen their case for a conditional approval. Other foreign vendors that will likely receive exemptions soon are vendors that have historically had a major presence in the U.S. market, including Vantiva from France (which in 2024 acquired CommScope’s home networks business, giving it a considerable U.S. footprint), and several Taiwanese ODMs with a legacy of partnering with major Tier One U.S. ISPs, including Arcadyan, Askey, and Sercomm.

Mainland Chinese vendors are the obvious losers, given the underlying goal of the Covered List. It is undeniable that Mainland Chinese vendors that, in the past, have opportunistically addressed the U.S. market, and have not invested in building a firm foundation in the market and preparing for this new policy shift will be hit hard. Many Mainland Chinese suppliers have been preparing for the possibility of tightening restrictions for over half a decade, and are now in a strong position to potentially receive conditional approvals. TP-Link, the world’s largest supplier of retail Wi-Fi routers, is an example. In 2022, TP-Link divided its operations into two separate entities—a Mainland Chinese-orientated company based in Shenzhen, and an international company headquartered in Singapore. Since then, the international company has been, on paper at least, completely separate from the Mainland Chinese entity. Then, in 2024, TP-Link repositioned its global headquarters to California, and reinforced its investment in the United States, with domestic operations and localized manufacturing. This preparation gives TP-Link a justification just as strong as many other foreign brands to receive a conditional approval, and the scale of TP-Link’s investment in the United States mean that forcing its departure would incur a significant economic hit to the U.S. economy. Add to this the fact that unlike Huawei and ZTE, which were the subject of the targeted bans in 2021, TP-Link is not an innovation leader and arguably does not threaten U.S. innovation leadership, so the incentives for completely banning TP-Link and depriving the United States of the capacity and scale that it can offer are significantly lessened.

Overall, on account of the relatively inelastic demand for Wi-Fi routers in the United States and the speed at which conditional approvals have begun to arrive, ABI Research anticipates that the change in total shipment volumes to the U.S. market will be relatively marginal, although we will see considerable market share shifts occur as certain vendors are unable to receive a conditional approval to avoid the ban, or choose simply to deprioritize the U.S. market altogether and pivot elsewhere. ABI Research also believes that the long-term survival of the foreign router ban is unclear. The national security justification for the policy is weak, especially given that consumer Wi-Fi routers are not high-tech equipment, the importation and use of foreign enterprise APs is not restricted, and existing consumer Wi-Fi equipment can continue to be used and even receive firmware updates through 2028.

A cynical observer may consider the move to be more concerned with incentivizing domestic U.S. manufacturing, yet the uneconomical nature of producing Wi-Fi routers at scale on U.S. soil means that this is unlikely to be realized in the near term. Therefore, the most probable outcome is either that the DHS and DoW will continue liberally granting conditional approvals to ensure that the U.S. market has sufficient supplies of consumer Wi-Fi equipment, or that consumer Wi-Fi routers will be quietly dropped from the Covered List entirely, if not during Trump’s administration, then during the administration that follows.