E1651: Are Ham Radios REALLY Being Banned NOW

🚨 Rumor Alert: Is the FCC banning ALL ham radios from Amazon, eBay & Walmart in 2025? Social media is buzzing with claims of a total crackdown on Chinese-made amateur radios like Baofeng and Hytera – but it's mostly MISINFORMATION! In this video, we break down the REAL FCC enforcement advisory from October 2025: It's targeting UNAUTHORIZED gear from national security "Covered List" companies (Huawei, ZTE, Hytera) that could spy or disrupt comms. Legit, FCC-certified ham radios for hobbyists? Totally unaffected – keep scanning those bands worry-free!

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Article link - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/major-us-online-retailers-remove-listings-millions-prohibited-chinese-2025-10-10/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Prohibited Chinese electronics. Something after the bad Labs video that
I put out a couple of weeks ago, some retailers
are talking about removing products from certain Chinese companies, and
other people are talking about a Ham radio band. But which,
what are the details and what is this really and

(00:22):
are we gonna see more of it? I think so?
But let's look at this article today. So I ran
across a video on YouTube while I was researching this
article that I found on Reuters dot com. And the
video was titled Ham Radio Crackdown the Band that No
One Saw coming. And I think that that's a bit ambiguous.

(00:46):
So I find this to be a little bit well, uninformed,
is the is the good word for it. Uninformed. It's
a video about a Ham radio. Like I said, it's
called Ham Radio Crackdown the band No One Saw coming.
In Again, I was researching this article that I found
through one of my Google news feeds, and this is
the article that I found right here, and that's the

(01:08):
article that I'm going to share with you today. Now.
To be clear, this article never talks about Ham radio
at all. It never mentions anything about Ham radio. It
never mentions anything about a Ham radio manufacturer. It talks
about three or four different Chinese manufacturers. None of them
are hand radio manufacturers. Okay, So someone who is talking

(01:29):
about tech that they don't know about my mistake. One
of these retailers for a Ham radio manufacturers. I can certainly.
I think it's an honest mistake. I don't think there's
anything nefarious going on here. I don't think he's trying
to deceive anybody. I don't think anyone's trying to deceive anybody.
Whoever I'm talking about. I'm not talking about anyone specific. Okay,
but let's read this article together and let me tell
you what I think about it. Okay. Major US online

(01:53):
retailers remove listings for millions of prohibited Chinese electronics. Okay,
Now read what that says. US online retailers remove listings
for millions of prohibited Chinese electronics. Okay, So that doesn't
say anything to me about the FCC at all. However,
the FCC is quoted in this article. Okay. Summary, FCC
says millions of listings for Chinese electronics online retail website

(02:17):
has been removed. Okay, FCC says that listings of Chinese
electronics has been removed US telecom regulator has taken series
of steps to crack down on Chinese telecoms, and latest
action comes amid rising tension between Washington and Beijing on
numerous fronts. And I think that could be likened back
to the article that we read here on this channel

(02:39):
couple weeks ago about the crackdown on Chinese own test
labs that the FCC is trying to do right now
to maintain better quality control about what they do and
don't put their stamp on. Now, the FCC, regardless of
what you think about the FCC, if the FCC's stamp
and name and approval are going to go onto a product,

(02:59):
and they should absolutely one hundred percent have complete say
so of over what their stamp does and does not
go onto. Okay. So if they don't want their stamp
going onto a product, they shouldn't have to have it there, Okay.
So now they can be a little bit restrictive and
a little bit overbearing and over controlling at times, and
sometimes they don't do any sometimes they're very lax and

(03:21):
don't do anything. And we're not really talking about any
of that today. We're just kind of reading through this
article that I found and I wanted to show you
guys today. So this was October tenth, which was a
week and a half or so ago at the time
of this recording. The chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr,
which we talked about him in a previous video as well,
said in an interview that the items removed are either
on a US list of barred equipment or we're not

(03:45):
authorized by the agency, including items like home security cameras
and smart watches from company called companies like Huawei. Talked
about them before a long time ago. They were I
used to own a four G hotspot that was made
by Whuahwei, hang Zoo, Hike Vision, Hickvision, Zte, and Dahua Technology.

(04:07):
Now I'm not familiar with any of these, but if
you click on these links that they're linked from here,
it takes you to another routers page, Reuter's page. If
you scroll down here and you click on the website
the u URL for these companies like these guys are
making like home security cameras. That's what you want. You
want China being able to tap into a home security

(04:29):
camera that they manufactured and you know, look at your
driveway or whatever, or look at the inside of your home,
depending on where you put your camera. But if you
look at all the I mean all of these websites
basically look the same. To me, it looks like the
same designer designed all these websites. And they're all kind
of like with this floating htm A five or flash
or whatever. They're not nobody uses flash anymore, but whatever,

(04:50):
whatever the technology is that makes all this hover go
around the website. I'm not a web developer. I can't
talk about that, but I mean they kind of a
look the same. It's just I don't know. I find
a little bit suspect that all of these websites to
this soun. I wonder if it's all the same company anyway.
Car said. Companies are putting new processes in place to

(05:11):
prevent future prohibited items as a result of the FCC oversight.
We're going to keep up with our efforts. Car said,
keep our efforts up. The FCC has issued a new
National Security knows for reminding companies prohibited items, including video
surveillance equipment. Car said some of the items could allow
China to surveil Americans, disrupt communications networks, and otherwise threaten

(05:35):
US national security. Yeah, I mean, if a Chinese company
shows you a product through Amazon, through eBay, through wherever,
through another retailer, and they can tap into that product
and monitor it through some back door that they put
in the programming software, then yeah, that's totally that's nobody
wants that. It's totally illegitimate. It's something the FCC should

(05:59):
crack down on, and I'm one hundred percent for that.
But what's this have to do with him radio? Okay,
let's read on. So he goes on here and I'm
gonna put I'll put this, I'll put this article link
and blow. It's not a very long article article at all. Okay,
you can see this right here and it said it
talks about z T Huawei ZTE here again, China Mobile
and China Telecom, which again I went to their websites

(06:22):
and these are very similar looking websites also, and China Mobile.
It kind of sounds like a DMR Digital Mobile Radio.
I don't know, it's not really. It's talking about all
these investors and press release and dividends and financial statements
and blah blah blah and stock prices et cetera, et cetera.

(06:42):
I don't know what these people make. I don't know
if they make anything at all that would affect you
and I. But the part that does affect you and
I right here, if you scroll down and you find
this place right here, it says. In March, FCC said
it was investigating nine Chinese companies on the covered list,
including huawez Ete we talked about then, as well as

(07:04):
High Terra Communications, Dahua, Pacifica Networks, com net China, Unicom Americas,
et cetera. So High Terra is the company that is
supposedly making Ham radios and are supposedly getting banned according
to some other video that I've found. Well, okay, well,

(07:26):
here's the truth of it here right here, Okay, High
Terra does not make Ham radios anymore than Motorola makes
Ham radios. You can absolutely one percent use a high
Terra on Ham radio bands if it covers those bands.
There's nothing illegal about that at all. It's completely legitimate.
And I know several guys who have a High Tira

(07:47):
radio and they you know, they sound good. In fact,
I know several Motorola guys who have High Terra radios
that say that claim they sound better than their Motorola radios.
About seven years ago at Daytonham Mention, High Terra made
an appearance on the scene of amateur radio and announced
a new AR four eighty two g DMRHT. It was
monoband they actually sent me one. I did a video

(08:10):
about it, and I'll link that somewhere in here. And
then a year or so after that they just kind
of disappeared. Now I learned later what that reasoning was.
They backed out of the game for some reason. I
can't remember what it was right now. But this is
the only as far as I know, this is the
only amateur radio made, only radio made by High Terra
for the amateur radio market. So today and then this was,

(08:31):
like I said seven years ago, Today they don't make
anything for the amateur radio market at all. Again, you
can use high Terra, you can use high Terra on
amateur radio frequencies. You can totally do that. But it's
not this is not a This is not a People
think of banned band Chinese electronics and they think Bowfang.

(08:52):
There's nothing in this article about Bowfang. There's nothing in
this article about any tone, tyt kyd, Tai, Tarra, KAIDERA,
several of these other sounding ones. Hi Terra is the
only two way radio that's mentioned in this article. Okay,
And he talks about these FCC probing if Chinese tech
telecom firms seeking to evade restrictions. This is another article here,

(09:17):
and he's talked about nine different companies and there's no
one other than hi Tera mentioned in this article as well,
not any of the not any of the companies, not
any of the companies that you and I would recognize
as Chinese made radios that you know, we might buy
on Amazon or see people carrying around anfest or anything

(09:39):
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(10:02):
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Blow thanks Bioino for supporting the channel. Pretty much all
of these websites I'm clicking on or talking about camera
equipment and video surveillance equipment. And I find it interesting

(10:43):
that Hiterra is mixed in there because they're a two
way radio manufacturer, but you know what, they do other
stuff besides just two way radio. Wal So whether it's
ham radio or commercial radio, hi Terra is just a
Chinese electronics manufacturing company. So whether or not, I mean
again that there's five to six different five or six
different companies listed in this Reuter's ad that we're looking

(11:07):
at here, and Hitera is the only one that when
we look at it, we think, oh, that's a radio manufacturer,
and they are, but they likely do other things too,
because everybody else talked about here, even that China mobile one,
even that one, when I talked about that one, I
never really saw anything on their website that was radio related.

(11:28):
So it seems like and according to this statement that
the FCC chairman made, it seems like they're more going
after video surveillance equipment from this most recent article, at least,
that's kind of how I read it, and i'd be
interested to see what you guys think about that in
the comment section blow as well. I don't really think

(11:48):
that there's much to this. They might the FCC, again,
I must read it, reiterate the title of this article.
There's nothing about a ban at all. In this title.
It says major US online re tailors remove listings for
millions of prohibited Chinese electronics. So the FCC is working
to prohibit certain things that they think might contain surveillance

(12:11):
illegal surveillance measures. And this article specifically is as mentioning
US online retailers that have chosen to remove listings of
those products from their store. It doesn't say anything about Amazon,
but you kind of assume that's talking about Amazon is
removing these listings. And if we go over here to
Amazon and we search for high Terra. There's a BD

(12:33):
five oh two. Okay, this is a UHF only four
hundred and four to seventy megahertz forty eight channel four.
Why UHFHT for three hundred dollars with no screen on it,
just like a motor roller radio. High Terra is very
good quality. The high Terra ones the radios that I
have seen and used in the past, which is not
very many, okay, but the ones I have seen and
used in the past are quite good as far as

(12:55):
reception that. They have good front end rejection, They have
a good audio both transmit and receive audio. They are
well made radios, so it kind of surprises me that
they're on this list at all. However, they're not ham radios, okay,
they're commercial grade radios. This one here looks like it's
a dual band forty eight channels, eight pre program channels.

(13:18):
No FCC license needed, it says right there, So that
tells me it's the pre program channels are probably somewhere
in the MERS or FR. If they're in FRS range,
then this radios are a radio legal so I'm not
sure what that means. Says. Frequency is both one thirty
six to one seventy four and four fifty to four
to seventy Okay, so it doesn't even go it goes
one thirty six to one seventy four and four fifty

(13:40):
to four seventy. So it does not cover this one
does not cover the UHF seventy centimeter or amateur radio band.
So you can find a few other things. They've got
some network radios. You can find a few other things
about High Terra on Amazon. But they are not They're
they're a very good commercial grade radio manufacturer that apparently
did something to piss off the fcs SE. I don't
really know what, but they're not They're not Ham radios anyway.

(14:03):
So all of that to say that I think the
big scare of banning High Terra's is number one. It
looks like it's just a scare because they're still listed
on Amazon right now, and I don't know what the
FCC has said about High Terra, but I didn't I
didn't really look it up and research it because they're

(14:23):
not actually Ham radios. When they when the FCC says
something about banning Baofang, I'll make another video about that.
But what do you guys think. Have you heard more
on this? Have you seen this article on Reuter's because
again that's this is something that came across my news feed,
and I like to make videos like this that are
talking about FCC and the efforts they keep doing to

(14:44):
uh to you know, in theory of improve radio communications
and radio quality inside of the USA. Have you heard
about this? What do you think about it? What do
you think should be next? And do you own a
high terror radio? Do you own a high terror radio
that you currently use on amateur radio bands? Let me
know the model number in the comments section. Blow love

(15:05):
to see what you think about tell me your opinion
about the quality of that radio too. If you like
this video, then check out these videos over here. Which
YouTube thinks you want to watch next and we will
catch you next time.