The official process for the Department of Commerce's proposal consists of two 30-day-long phases. First, after initiating the ban (following approval from other government agencies), TP-Link would be given a month to respond. Then Commerce would have its own month to decide whether to continue with the ban, taking into account TP-Link's objections. This is likely the period when negotiations will take center stage, as the two parties work out all the details. That being said, the Department of Commerce has made it clear that nothing short of a ban would suffice in this case.
China-related national security concerns have picked up steam under the Trump administration, which entered a temporary tariff truce with Beijing last week — likely what's keeping the ban from taking effect immediately — but tensions continue to escalate. Despite being an American company, TP-Link Systems remains an alleged threat to the government, which claims that spying software can be installed on these router s by simply pushing a state-mandated update from China, which TP-Link Technologies (its parent) would need to comply with.
At this point, nothing has been set in motion, and we could very well see a deal being worked out between Washington and TP-Link; otherwise, this would become one of the most significant technological bans in the country's history, joining the ranks of Huawei, whose legacy infrastructure is still being phased out by network providers. A ban on TP-Link routers would shake up the market considerably, leaving a clear gap for value-oriented buyers who relied on the company's hardware. Many network providers worldwide already use TP-Link routers as their default.
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Hassam Nasir Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.
jp7189 Tplink devices work well and are very cheap. Make sense they own a large part of the market. I have no knowledge of any backdoor, but if they do it's not like salt typhoon was doing them any favors. It reminds me of how volt typhoon controlled every fortigate firewall for a while and it was only discovered when other hacking groups started to fight them for control of said firewalls that folks noticed. Reply
Key considerations
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/routers/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/routers/tp-link-routers-face-potential-u-s-ban-over-alleged-china-related-national-security-concerns-company-vigorously-disputes-department-of-commerces-findings#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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