The Federal Communications Commission has given Netgear the first exemption from its new ban on foreign-made Wi-Fi routers, a move that puts the company in line to keep selling some of its gear even as the agency tightens restrictions on new devices built abroad. The FCC listed Netgear on Tuesday as the only company with Conditional Approval on its website.
Netgear’s routers are manufactured in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan, and the company said it is aligned with a “more secure digital future” for customers, according to chief executive CJ Prober. The exemption matters because the FCC order currently applies to new models produced in foreign countries, and nearly every router sold in the U.S. is at least partly made outside the country.
The FCC announced on March 23 that it would ban all foreign-made Wi-Fi routers, saying devices produced abroad were directly implicated in the Volt, Flax and Salt Typhoon cyberattacks. In the Salt Typhoon case, attackers exploited Cisco routers to reach networks used by U.S. internet providers including AT&T, Verizon and Lumen. Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, said the agency would continue to help keep U.S. cyberspace, critical infrastructure and supply chains safe and secure.
The order does not touch routers already purchased, but it does mean consumers will not be able to buy new routers that the FCC had not already authorized before the ban. Manufacturers can apply for exemptions, and Netgear is the first to clear that hurdle. The FCC says a router counts as foreign-made if any major stage of its creation — including manufacturing, assembly, design or development — happens outside the U.S.
The timing also lands in a wider fight over the hardware supply chain. An estimated 60% of routers in the U.S. are manufactured in China, and TP-Link has been under U.S. government scrutiny for more than a year over its China ties. More than half a dozen U.S. departments and agencies reportedly backed a ban on TP-Link at the end of 2025, underscoring how far the debate has spread beyond one company or one model. William Budington of the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the measure “an extremely blunt instrument” that will affect many harmless products, and said it comes amid mass defunding of cyberdefense initiatives and a lack of a good federal testing lab for consumer-grade routers. For now, Netgear is the only company on the FCC’s website with conditional approval, a small opening in a ban that could reshape what Americans are able to buy next.
