FCC Commissioner Starks Schedules Public Meeting on Telecom Network Security
FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said he's calling companies in to talk next week about insecure equipment in U.S. networks. Starks focused on that during a speech at Wednesday's FCBA lunch. Starks discussed use of equipment by Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE in U.S. networks during his initial news conference as a commissioner in February (see 1902080056).
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The workshop, open to the public, will be June 27 to solicit information from carriers, manufacturers, academics, and trade associations and other stakeholders, a spokesperson said. Starks invited his colleagues to attend. More details are to come, a spokesperson said.
“Threats don’t just affect individuals or businesses, they go to the fundamental notion of protecting our nation,” Starks said. “Network security is national security and our interconnected networks are only as secure as their most vulnerable pieces.” Consequences could be huge, he warned: “Beyond the threat of foreign surveillance and hacking, there is a real risk of disruption to our communications capabilities in the event of a national emergency."
Starks said the FCC needs to better understand the nature of the threat posed by Huawei. “There currently exists an active debate on whether all Huawei equipment poses a threat, or whether some of it could be safe,” he said: “We need to consider each part of the wireless network and the threats posed. Is the risk only in the network core of routers, servers and switches? Or is the network edge, including radios and antenna, also compromised?"
“Congress gave us the authority to gather this information, and we need to use it,” Starks said. “We also need to work with other federal agencies ... to bring as much expertise as possible to address this problem.”
Starks said he voted to revoke China Mobile’s long-standing Communications Act Section 214 application “because of significant concerns convincingly raised by executive agencies about Chinese government influence and equipment that could seriously compromise our national security.” While the FCC (see 1905090039) addressed that Chinese carrier “two others with similar ownership structures, China Telecom and China Unicom, have existing approval to operate in the U.S.,” he said: “We need to determine whether they present the same set of threats and we need to act if they do.” The FCC later posted Starks’ speech.
In a chat, Starks was asked about the digital divide. It's increasingly viewed as “persistent” and when something's persistent, “we need to rethink the issue,” he said. Starks hears about the divide a lot when he's traveling, and people are angry, especially in rural areas: “People are feeling left out.”
Starks also discussed broadband data, saying funding decisions should be based on complete and accurate data. Some of the data has been problematic, he said, noting when Chairman Ajit Pai circulated the draft 2019 broadband deployment report, a public interest group discovered the data used to create the report had a major error, with a new overstating high-speed internet connections by more than 62 million. It's a problem that the FCC didn’t have a “red button flash or an “outlier detection system” to quickly spot those kinds of mistakes, he said.