Taiwanese PC maker Asus has received a temporary exemption to the US ban on foreign-made Wi-Fi routers after the Defense Department determined that its products do not pose a national security risk, the Federal Communications Commission announced.
As PCMag reports, an FCC exemption is good for 18 months, so Asus’s “conditional approval” lasts until March 6, 2028. It applies to various Wi-Fi product lines, including the RT Router Series, ROG GT Series, ROG Strix GS Series, TUF Gaming Series, ExpertWiFi Series, ZenWiFi Mesh Series, 5G MiFi Series, repeaters, and wireless access points.
The exemption is good news for Asus, as the Taiwanese vendor has begun preparing Wi-Fi 8 products ahead of the wireless technology’s official standardization. Last week, Asus announced the latest ROG Rapture GT-BN98 series had launched in Canada, with a global rollout slated for October.
So far, Asus hasn’t responded to a request for comment. But when applying for an exemption, the company had to answer a long list of questions, including a “detailed, time-bound plan to establish or expand manufacturing in the United States for the router.” Currently, many routers imported to the US come from Vietnam, Mexico, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Thailand.
Other router vendors that have received an exemption include Netgear, Amazon’s Eero, SpaceX’s Starlink, and Taiwanese brands Zyxel, Arcadyan Technology, and Asus subsidiary Askey Computer. But so far, the US has yet to grant an exemption to the major Wi-Fi router maker TP-Link, which has long been fighting accusations over its ties to China.
The US enacted the ban—which only applies to new products—over concerns that foreign-made routers introduce “supply chain vulnerabilities” that hackers and cyberspies can exploit. However, TP-Link has been stressing that it’s a US company after relocating its headquarters to Irvine, California, and splitting off from the Chinese business.
In April, TP-Link told the FCC it plans to invest “hundreds of millions of dollars” to bring its manufacturing from Vietnam to the US while previewing its plan to apply for an exemption from the ban. “Conditional Approval will enable TP-Link to complete those investments,” it wrote.
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