Last year FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said the FCC had approved more than 3,000 applications from Huawei since 2018. But the latest move would tighten this further by enshrining it in regulation.

“This is the final step to get equipment from untrusted vendors off US networks,” said Martijn Rasser of the Centre for a New American Security. “There are concerns that these devices could be used to spy on Americans by collecting and exfiltrating data. Another issue is that each such device is a potential cyberattack vector.”

The Axios media group, which first reported the story, said this would mark the first time the FCC has banned electronic equipment on national-security grounds.

“It’s no coincidence that the FCC is preparing the bans shortly after the US took action around restricting China’s access to semiconductors,” said Abishur Prakash of the Center for Innovating the Future in Toronto.

“The White House is effectively building ‘walls’ around the technologies and markets that China needs but the US controls,” Prakash said, adding that the move would force China and its companies to focus on building technologies that were “America-free” or on vying for markets that “aren’t in Washington’s camp”.

Huawei and ZTE did not immediately respond to requests for comment, although the companies have repeatedly denied their systems are insecure or platforms for spying.

The Chinese embassy in Washington slammed the reported ban, describing it as a denial of market economy principles that the US always “flaunts”.

“The US has been generalising the concept of national security, abusing state power and suppressing Chinese hi-tech enterprises by all means,” said embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu.

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“We urge the US side to stop its wrong practices and provide a just, equitable and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies to conduct normal business in the US.”

The FCC typically considers new orders in one of two ways. The chairwoman can present them in the agency’s monthly public meeting, generally used for more routine issues. Alternatively, it can send them to the FCC’s five commissioners individually for them to vote on at will, as often happens in more controversial matters. The reported Huawei and ZTE ban falls under this latter category.

In theory, were satisfactory safeguards enacted giving Washington greater confidence Huawei and other Chinese-made network equipment were not conduits for espionage, the ban could be reversed.

“But it’s something that the FCC would have to do. It won’t happen magically,” said Jeffrey Carlisle, a telecoms lawyer with the law firm Lerman Senter in Washington. “It’s a lot easier to not let anything happen than to take a step forward and reverse a policy.”

That is especially true with anything concerning China, as a harder line towards Beijing is one of the few issues that Democrats and Republicans agree on these days. “It’s a rare example of bipartisanship,” Carlisle added.

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The cordon around Huawei and ZTE has been steadily, if somewhat fitfully, tightening.

The Trump administration’s ban in 2019 targeted equipment that had been particularly popular among smaller US telecommunications carriers. In 2018, for instance, some 25 per cent of rural wireless carriers used the Chinese hardware, according to the Rural Wireless Association, owing to its lower pricing.

In 2020, Trump signed legislation barring US subsidies – often handed out to US rural carriers providing low-cost service to libraries, schools and poorer customers – for companies buying equipment from the Chinese companies.

Later that same year, Congress appropriated US$1.9 billion to “rip and replace” the Chinese equipment for Western-made networks. But rural carriers complained that this only covered 40 per cent of their replacement costs.

Congress is expected to authorise another US$3 billion or so over the next year or two, but in the meantime some smaller carriers continue to use Huawei and ZTE equipment.

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“This is yet another example of the remarkable continuity on these issues between the Trump and Biden administrations and the broad bipartisan support for such measures in the Congress,” said Rasser.

Analysts added that the latest tightening of restrictions on semiconductors and telecommunications points to a tougher US line towards China.

“Instead of acting cautiously and slowly, the US is taking rapid, bold action, undeterred by how China could retaliate,” said Prakash. “This is also a message that, for the US, any possibility of ‘rekindling’ the relationship with China has disappeared. A dangerous, new phase of the US-China competition has begun that could split the world.”