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The Chinese government has supported both Huawei and ZTE in their history and has a history of spying on U.S. companies.

Huawei and ZTE have benefited from Chinese governments (in the form of economic development loans at least), and the Chinese government is widely believed to have been a dedicated hacker. But are Huawei and ZTE guilty by association? It’s cheaper to build things in China, be it software or hardware. Plus, executives at U.S. companies tell me that they never buy used networking gear from any vendor because it can have unexplained Chinese software on it. The Chinese don’t necessarily need a company in its pocket to install networking spyware, when it can sell gear on eBay to unsuspecting corporate buyers. A source in the networking industry tells me that the solution here may be to demand a full source code review from Huawei to prove that Huawei is spying and sending what it discovers back to the Chinese. However, this person also notes that Huawei would be well within its rights to point out that the U.S. guys should do the same with code that they have written in China.

A congressional report concluded that two Chinese telecommunications firms pose a national-security threat to the United States and should be blocked from doing business in the country.

After a yearlong investigation, the House Intelligence Committee concluded that telecom giants Huawei and ZTE failed to provide sufficient information to ease concerns that the Chinese government could use them to spy on the United States or sabotage critical communications networks. "Based on available classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems," the investigators wrote. The report said the companies failed to provide detailed information about their ties to the Chinese Communist Party, their governance structures or operations in America. Congressional investigators said they also found evidence that Huawei might have engaged in bribery, corruption and copyright infringement. The committee recommended that the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States block acquisitions, takeovers or mergers involving Huawei and ZTE. They said Congress should consider proposals to expand the agency's authority to block purchasing agreements as well. They said the U.S. government should not use the companies' equipment and strongly recommended that American companies refrain from doing business with them.

The two companies disputed the findings of the report, saying their products are safe for use in the US. Huawei called the report’s findings "baseless." The company said that it cooperated with investigators "in open and transparent manner," making available its top executives and a wealth of its corporate information. ZTE, the smaller of the two companies, said in a statement that its products are safe and that it had set "an unprecedented standard for cooperation by any Chinese company with a congressional investigation."

[Commentary] In the 2012 general election campaign alone, 1.1 million references have been made in ads to jobs, taxes, the budget and government spending. In contrast, fewer than 25,000 references have been made to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fewer than 100,000 ad occurrences have mentioned education; fewer than 10,000 have mentioned defense. About 4,000 have mentioned immigration; fewer than 400 have mentioned the U.S. Supreme Court. From April (when the race between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney began) through the first day of October, 309 unique ads have aired a collective 797,553 times. Many ads mention more than one issue. For example, taxes are often paired with government spending, Medicare with healthcare, etc. Certain ads have aired thousands of times apiece across 60-plus media markets; others have aired a few times in a few markets, or only once. Our informal survey takes a little license in equalizing airings across media markets and dayparts, regardless of differing ad rates or audience size, which is a no-no in any serious evaluation of advertising but is fine for this simpler purpose.

[Wilner is VP of Kantar Media's CMAG, which tracks and analyzes broadcast TV advertising content, placement and spend.]

Amid the recent release of new ultrafast smartphone models, two interactive maps provide a reminder of the United States' wireless divide and the incremental progress in closing it.

One shows areas that still lack coverage for 3G or 4G wireless coverage. It includes 1,738,828 residents and 653,392 miles of highways and secondary roads (including a few stretches of the fabled Route 66 through northern New Mexico and Arizona). If you live in one of these areas or are driving through, you’ll find no 4G or even 3G service for your new iPhone5, Droid Razr M, Nokia Lumia 900, or other smartphone.

Another shows the areas with 224,462 residents, and 83,000 miles of roads, expected to start getting service thanks to $300 million worth of grants the Federal Communications Commission announced. The money is going to large and small wireless carriers, following a bidding process favoring areas that would get the most road miles covered.