The Federal Communications Commission has announced that Netgear has been given conditional approval that effectively exempts it from a previous ban on foreign-made networking routers. The conditional approval gives the company a de facto — though potentially temporary — monopoly on the selling and servicing of new consumer routers in the US.

The FCC has just granted Netgear a conditional approval to import its future consumer routers, cable modems, and cable gateways into the US through October 1st, 2027 — even though the company builds t...