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Who checks the devices

Nearly every wireless consumer device imported into or marketed in the United States passes through the Federal Communications Commission's equipment authorization program. The Commission does not run that testing itself. It recognizes private test labs, telecommunication certification bodies (TCBs) that review applications and issue grants, and accreditation bodies that vouch for the labs. On a Lawfare Daily episode published October 28, 2026, Andy Hendrickson, chief of the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology, and Alice Jou, the office's chief of staff and deputy chief, put the scale at roughly 600 recognized test labs and about 40 certification bodies.

The same episode described a shift in where the work is done. According to the officials, the U.S. share of applications by testing-firm location fell from about 31 percent in 2007 to below 4 percent in 2025, while the share associated with China rose from about 15 percent to roughly 82 percent. That shift is the backdrop for what the officials informally called the "bad labs" rulemaking and what the FCC formally titles its Equipment Authorization Integrity Proceeding, ET Docket No. 24-136.

Three steps in one docket

The proceeding has unfolded in stages, and the Federal Register record shows how far each one reached. In the First Report and Order, adopted May 22, 2025 and published August 7, 2025, the Commission required every recognized TCB, test lab, and accreditation body to certify that it is not owned by, controlled by, or subject to the direction of a "prohibited entity," to report equity or voting interests of 5 percent or more, and barred any body under prohibited-entity control from the program. The order treats the Covered List, maintained under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, as one of several sources feeding that definition.

That first order stopped short of a location-based rule. As the Commission later recounted, it "decided to defer taking any action to no longer recognize 'test labs in non-MRA countries,'" reasoning that ownership and control rules mitigated the risk. It also acknowledged that its rules "are ambiguous on the permissibility" of recognizing labs in countries without a mutual recognition agreement (MRA), and that before a 2014 action such labs had not been recognized at all.

The second stage came with FCC 26-28, adopted April 30, 2026 and published May 15, 2026. According to the officials, the April action gave trusted labs a faster path, supporting streamlined approvals for certain technologies when testing is done through a trusted lab in the United States or a reciprocal economy. The accompanying Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking reopened the question the 2025 order had deferred: whether to prohibit recognition of labs, TCBs, and accreditation bodies "located in, or that conduct testing, certification, or accreditation in," non-Reciprocal Economies, and whether to withdraw recognition already granted. It also asked whether the bar should reach bodies "directly or indirectly owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of" such an economy.

The October item

The third stage is the development of the moment. The FCC's Sunshine Act notice for its October 29, 2026 open meeting, published in the Federal Register that day, listed as Item 4 a Third Report and Order and Third Further Notice titled "Prohibiting Test Labs and Certification Bodies in Non-Reciprocal Countries." Per the notice, the item would prohibit recognition of test labs, TCBs, and laboratory accreditation bodies "located in non-Reciprocal Economies, which are territories lacking a Mutual Recognition Agreement or other comparable reciprocal trade agreement with the United States," would require "all substantive FCC testing, certification, and accreditation activities on which equipment authorization depends" to occur in the U.S. or Reciprocal Economies, and would adopt "a uniform transition period ending December 1, 2028." The further notice would seek comment on additional integrity measures.

Whether the Commission adopted the item is not something the pages reviewed here establish. The Sunshine notice is an agenda, not a record of the vote. On the Lawfare episode, Jou said the item was "teed up for a vote later this month," and Hendrickson stressed that "we haven't voted on this yet." As of the Federal Register listings opened for this article, no Third Report and Order in the docket had been published, so the item should be treated as not yet final pending release and publication.

The legal footing

The Commission's ordering clauses for the Second Further Notice cite sections 302 and 303 of the Communications Act, among others, together with the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 and the Secure Equipment Act of 2021. On the podcast, Jou characterized section 302, which authorizes regulation of the interference potential of devices that radiate radio-frequency energy, as a "quiet superpower," and noted that Congress added explicit authority over TCB and test-lab standards roughly three decades ago. The reciprocity framing is new in emphasis. Jou described reciprocity as "the price of entry into the U.S. device market" and named China, Switzerland, and India as non-reciprocal economies, a list that shows the proposal is not drawn solely along adversary lines.

The enforcement logic is about gatekeepers rather than gates. Hendrickson put it this way: "if the gatekeeper is not accountable, even a very good rule at the gate becomes sort of harder to enforce." The officials illustrated the point with a certification body, Derycom, approved in October 2024, which they said certified almost 12,000 applications within roughly 18 months from a listed Minnesota address too small for the required staff and equipment, while most of its employees were in China and the U.S. individual listed as technical reviewer declared under oath that he had never done work for it. The accreditor suspended the firm, and the FCC issued a citation for false location statements and testing outside its accredited scope.

Where it fits

The lab rule sits beside a Covered List that has itself been changing shape. Writing at Carnegie on September 15, 2026, Geoffrey Irving described the FCC's equipment-authorization regime as a "parallel" market-access restriction that now reaches product categories, including foreign-produced drones, consumer routers, advanced robotic devices, and certain power inverters, subject to exemptions and conditional approvals. Nicholas Weaver, in a critical Lawfare essay of September 3, 2026, dated those category actions to December 21, 2025 for drones, March 13, 2026 for routers, and July 28, 2026 for inverters and robotics, and argued that the deference built into the Secure Equipment Act leaves such determinations effectively unchallengeable. That is advocacy, but it frames the question the lab rule raises in milder form: the FCC is extending a regime built around named adversary entities into one organized around jurisdiction and reciprocity, with limited judicial checks.

Two practical issues will shape the record if the item was adopted. First, capacity: the notice ties the 2028 transition to giving labs time "to expand capacity" and manufacturers time "to find alternative Test Labs," and the Second Further Notice acknowledged that OET "has recognized hundreds of test labs based in non-MRA countries." Second, proportionality: that notice canvassed softer alternatives, including an additional fee, a longer review queue, and phasing out non-reciprocal bodies as their recognitions expire, so the record already holds the case for something short of an outright bar. For manufacturers, the operative question is no longer only whether a device is on the Covered List, but who tested it and where.

Sources

How to cite

JLCW Research Desk, FCC Moves to Drop Test Labs in Non-Reciprocal Economies From Its Equipment Authorization Program, J.L. & Cyber Warfare (2026), https://www.jlcw.org/articles/fcc-non-reciprocal-test-labs-equipment-authorization.

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