(The Epoch Times)—The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is questioning the accuracy of TP-Link’s equipment certifications after testing four Wi-Fi routers purchased from retail stores and finding they all transmitted at higher power levels than the company had reported to regulators.
Three of the four models also exceeded federal transmission-power limits, according to two FCC letters dated Oct. 15.
The agency said it had “tentatively determined” that TP-Link submitted “false or incorrect information” in its certification applications and asked the company to explain the discrepancies by Oct. 30.
Founded in China in 1996 and now operating a global business headquartered in Irvine, California, TP-Link is a major supplier of home Wi-Fi routers and networking equipment.
In an Oct. 27 statement to The Epoch Times, a spokesperson for TP-Link Systems Inc. described the FCC’s inspections as routine and said product test results are not always consistent.
“Individual product test results can occasionally vary,” the spokesperson said.
The company pledged to cooperate with the regulator and address any confirmed technical problems.
Routers Transmitted Above Certified Levels
Wi-Fi routers use radio signals to connect phones, computers, and other devices to the internet. Before selling wireless equipment in the United States, manufacturers generally must obtain FCC authorization demonstrating that their products comply with technical standards, including limits on radio transmission power.
Those limits help prevent wireless devices from interfering with other communications systems. Stronger transmissions can sometimes improve wireless coverage, but excessive power can also increase interference risks.
The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology identified discrepancies in four models: Archer BE670, Deco BE67, BE3600 TL-WR3602BE, and Archer GE800.
The largest discrepancy was found in the Deco BE67. At one tested frequency, the router transmitted at approximately 2.6 times the power level specified in its certification documents, exceeding the applicable FCC limit.
The Archer GE800 and Archer BE670 also exceeded their specified federal limits.
The fourth model, the BE3600 TL-WR3602BE, transmitted at approximately 1.82 times its certified power level, although the FCC did not identify a separate regulatory limit exceeded by that device.
The letters, signed by FCC Laboratory Division Chief Clifford Jones, do not explain what caused the discrepancies or report any actual interference with other communications.
The findings remain preliminary. The letters do not impose penalties or revoke the affected equipment authorizations.
TP-Link Faced Similar FCC Case in 2016
The new findings follow an earlier FCC investigation involving excessive transmission power in TP-Link routers.
In 2016, TP-Link Technologies agreed to pay a $200,000 civil penalty after regulators found that several of its routers could operate at power levels above those permitted on certain restricted Wi-Fi channels.
The problem involved a software setting that allowed users to change the country associated with the router, potentially enabling higher transmission power than U.S. rules allowed.
The company admitted violations and agreed to stop selling noncompliant devices, provide software updates, and implement a compliance program.
The October 2026 letters do not identify whether the latest discrepancies resulted from similar software settings, manufacturing variations, testing differences, or inaccurate certification information.
China Origins and New US Restrictions
TP-Link’s corporate structure has changed since the earlier FCC case.
The company was established in Shenzhen, China. In October 2024, TP-Link Systems Inc. announced that its global operations would be headquartered in Irvine, California, following a restructuring separating them from TP-LINK Technologies, which serves the Chinese market.
The two October FCC letters were addressed to different entities. One concerned three products registered to California-based TP-Link Systems Inc.; the other concerned the Archer GE800, registered to TP-Link Corporation Pte. Ltd. in Singapore. Both companies listed Sarah Wang as their certification contact, although the contact email addresses and company addresses differed.
TP-Link also faces lawsuits from five states over its connections to China and the security of its routers. Texas sued the company in February, followed by Florida, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska in October, alleging that it misled consumers about its reliance on Chinese suppliers, manufacturing operations, and technology.
TP-Link has denied the allegations. In response to the four October lawsuits, the company said the complaints were based on false premises and maintained that it does not share customer network data with foreign governments or unauthorized third parties.
In March, the FCC added foreign-produced consumer routers to a list of equipment subject to national security restrictions. The action generally blocks new authorizations unless manufacturers obtain conditional approval, but does not automatically prohibit the continued sale or use of previously authorized routers.
The October testing findings concern radio power compliance, not evidence of cybersecurity breaches or espionage.
TP-Link announced on Oct. 19 that it had signed a letter of intent with U.S. manufacturer Key Tronic to assemble next-generation routers in Mississippi. Production could begin in 2027, the company said, subject to regulatory approval.
The Epoch Times sought additional explanations from TP-Link about the cause of the power discrepancies and potential corrective measures. No further response was received by publication time.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.