The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) late last week denied applications from four “bad labs” the agency linked to the Chinese government, building on 11 previous denials sent out earlier this month and furthering what FCC chairman Brendan Carr said is part of an unprecedented national security review process.

The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) sent an initial application denial to CCIC-CSA International Certification and denied application renewals from Industrial Internet Innovation Center (Shanghai), State Radio Monitoring Center, and Reliability Laboratory – New H3C Technologies.

Those letters followed a similar move in early September to remove certification recognition on an initial tranche of labs, including seven "owned or controlled by the Chinese government.”

The FCC requires electronic equipment that uses radio frequencies sold in the US to pass certification requirements to ensure they don’t “contain prohibited equipment that threatens national security.” That certification testing is handled by accredited labs around the world.

Earlier this year, the government agency moved to reassess that accreditation from being based primarily on technical competence to also include “trustworthiness.”

“While the agency has in recent years barred entities on the FCC’s Covered List from having their devices approved for use in the US due to determinations that such devices pose national security risks, these new rules ensure that the accreditation and certification bodies and test labs are themselves not untrustworthy actors,” the FCC noted in adopting its new rules.

FCC chairman Carr told an audience during a keynote at today’s SCTE TechExpo25 event in Washington DC, that the “process was pretty basic.”

“But increasingly, we're asking these labs to engage in national security reviews,” Carr said. “And up to recently, we never had any check in place to make sure that the labs themselves are trustworthy actors that can be trusted to make this decision. After all, we don't want a Huawei spy gear box coming in the country with sort of a white label certification. So we've now adopted rules for the first time that let the FCC kick out of our system, not to recognize labs that are beholden to the government of China.”

The previous FCC investigation found 11 labs were “owned or controlled by a foreign adversary government under our rules.” Seven of those labs were sent letters stating plans to remove their certification accreditation. This included: Chongqing Academy of Information and Communications, CQC Internet of Vehicles Technical Service, CVC Testing, CVC Testing Shanghai, TTL CAICT, TUV Rheinland-CCIC Ningbo, and UL-CCIC

Four other labs had their accreditation expire following the FCC’s new rule adoption. This included: CESI (Guangzhou) Standards, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), Shanghai Institute of Measurement and Testing Technology (SIMT), and CCIC Southern Testing

"We've now adopted rules for the first time that let the FCC kick out of our system, not to recognize labs that are beholden to the government of China," Carr said of these actions.