The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) floated new rules to bar telecoms providers on a list of entities deemed national security threats from directly accessing US phone numbers for VoIP calls, a move slammed by Chinese authorities as unreasonable suppression of its enterprises.

Should the rules be approved at an FCC meeting in November and subsequently introduced, the curbs are intended to block access to the numbers from companies on its Covered List. This includes divisions of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, alongside numerous vendors.

The proposal is part of an ambition by the agency to cut so-called illegal robocalls in the US and is being promoted by the authority as a national security measure.

In comments published by Chinese state news agency Xinhua today (30 October), the country’s foreign ministry representative Guo Jiakun slammed what was described as unreasonable suppression of the country’s enterprises.

He reportedly said the US had “overstretched the concept of national security and abused state power to unreasonably suppress Chinese companies”.

Guo argued such moves seriously impede normal economic and trade exchanges and “do not serve the interests of any party, including US companies and consumers”.

China plans to take measures to safeguard “legitimate rights and interests”, Guo said.

Defensive
FCC chair Brendan Carr unveiled the move on 28 October, saying it would strengthen the nation’s robocall defences.

The plan would require companies to obtain national security-focused certifications to access private numbers, with changes set to be made to US VoIP numbering authorisation rules.

“We are going to enhance the vetting process that all providers must go through before they obtain access to telephone numbers,” Carr said.

“This will make it substantially more difficult for bad actors to operate in our networks. This step is part of our broader effort to look at every portion of the lifecycle of a call and make it more difficult for illegal robocalls to get through.”

The proposal is the latest FCC move targeting enterprises on the Covered List, which is largely made-up of companies from China.

Companies in the crosshairs and authorities in China have repeatedly slated such measures.

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