Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau has reached a $200,000 settlement with TP-Link in regards to selling in the US routers that could operate at output levels higher that allowed by FCC rules.
At the same time, TP-Link has also agreed to work with the open-source community and Wi-Fi chipset manufacturers to enable consumers to install third-party firmware on their Wi-Fi routers.
Source: Help Net Security
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday August 04 2016, @10:12AM
But wouldn't it be great if this became an official policy of the FCC and they actively made it part of the licensing process for wifi routers?
Well, since its FCC rules that encourage manufacturers to take the lazy route of just blocking all 3rd party firmware, rather than making the effort to separate out the regulated part, maybe it should be FCCs responsibility to mitigate the unintended effects of their rules...
Actually, having the radio part of the firmware and the router functionality separately upgradeable makes good sense: it reduces the chance of an update in one part introducing a regression in the other.