TP-Link India launched local production of Wi-Fi 7 networking hardware on May 25, 2026, becoming one of the first global networking brands to manufacture the next-generation wireless standard on Indian soil — a move timed precisely to India's regulatory unlock of the 6 GHz spectrum band and set against a backdrop of sustained US national security scrutiny that culminated in a sweeping FCC ban on foreign-made routers two months earlier.
The announcement, made in Bengaluru, is a meaningful step for India's electronics manufacturing ambitions. It is also a transparent strategic play by TP-Link to reframe its supply chain narrative at a moment when its Chinese origins have made it the central focus of a DOJ criminal antitrust probe, a Federal Trade Commission inquiry, a Texas Attorney General lawsuit filed in February 2026, and the most aggressive foreign-router regulatory action in American history.
The question enterprise procurement managers should be asking is not where the hardware is assembled. It is whether assembling it in India changes the legal obligations that follow the company's Chinese structure — and the answer, according to US government officials, is no.
What TP-Link India Actually Announced
Production is beginning with the Omada EAP770, a tri-band Wi-Fi 7 ceiling-mount enterprise access point built for high-density environments. The device integrates with TP-Link's Omada Software Defined Networking platform, enabling centralized and cloud-based management of distributed enterprise networks from a single dashboard. Target deployments include university campuses, hospitals, retail floors, hospitality networks, and large educational institutions.
This is not a single-product announcement. TP-Link India has outlined a phased expansion across its broader Wi-Fi 7 portfolio, including indoor, outdoor, and in-wall access points, to serve both domestic demand and, eventually, select international export markets. The company already manufactures approximately 92% of the products it sells in India through domestic Electronic Manufacturing Services partners, and it is targeting a localization level of 96–97% over the next three years.
Longer-term, TP-Link has stated ambitions for its largest global manufacturing facility to be located in India over a five-year horizon, alongside a Mumbai headquarters and a Bengaluru R&D center.
"Manufacturing Wi-Fi 7 products in India reflects our long-term commitment to supporting the country's digital infrastructure ambitions and the vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat," said Sanjay Sehgal, MD and CEO of TP-Link India. "With the opening of the 6 GHz band, India is entering a transformative phase in enterprise connectivity."
India's 6 GHz Spectrum Delicensing Unlocks Wi-Fi 7
The manufacturing launch follows directly from a regulatory change that had been years in the making. On January 20–21, 2026, India's Department of Telecommunications formally delicensed 500 MHz of spectrum in the 5925–6425 MHz band for license-exempt use, bringing India into alignment with the United States, European Union, and other major markets that had already enabled Wi-Fi 7 deployments.
Wi-Fi 7 — formally IEEE 802.11be — derives its headline performance gains from multi-link operation across 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands simultaneously, and from 320 MHz channel widths that are only viable with access to the 6 GHz band. Without the DoT's January 2026 action, Wi-Fi 7 deployments in India would have been limited to the already-congested 5 GHz band, removing most of the standard's performance advantage in enterprise settings.
The delicensing decision was not uncontested. Telecom operators, led by Reliance Jio, had pushed for the full 1200 MHz of the 6 GHz band to be auctioned for licensed 5G and 6G mobile services rather than delicensed for Wi-Fi. India's compromise — delicensing the lower 500 MHz while reserving the upper portion for future mobile auctions — means Wi-Fi 7 in India operates on a narrower spectrum footprint than in markets where the full band is available.
How Does Wi-Fi 7 Perform in Real Enterprise Settings?
Wi-Fi 7 (IEEE 802.11be) delivers theoretical maximum throughput of up to 46 Gbps, multi-link operation across all three frequency bands simultaneously, and 320 MHz channel widths — roughly four times the peak speeds of Wi-Fi 6E under optimal conditions. In enterprise environments, the more relevant gains are in latency reduction and the ability to support high device density without throughput degradation.
Independent enterprise deployments in markets where Wi-Fi 7 has been available since 2023 and 2024 — including the US and EU — report meaningful real-world improvements in campus and hospitality environments compared with Wi-Fi 6. However, achieving those gains requires compatible client devices; a laptop or mobile phone must also support Wi-Fi 7 to benefit from the upgraded access point. Enterprise buyers deploying Wi-Fi 7 infrastructure today are in part provisioning for a device refresh cycle that is still underway.
FCC Router Ban Drove TP-Link India's Timing
The business logic behind TP-Link India's manufacturing pivot runs deeper than capturing India's growing enterprise connectivity market. The timing is directly legible against the regulatory pressure TP-Link has faced in the United States.
On March 23, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission banned all foreign-produced consumer-grade routers from receiving new FCC authorization — the mechanism required to sell networking hardware in the US market. The ban was triggered by a White House-convened interagency security review that concluded imported routers pose "a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt US critical infrastructure." The FCC explicitly cited the Volt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon, and Salt Typhoon cyberattacks — all of which used compromised consumer routers as entry vectors — in its justification.
TP-Link had already been in US regulators' crosshairs for two years before the FCC acted broadly. A Department of Justice criminal antitrust investigation into TP-Link's pricing practices was reported in April 2025. The Federal Trade Commission opened a separate inquiry into whether TP-Link misled US consumers about its separation from its Chinese parent. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit in February 2026 alleging TP-Link's products had been "used by PRC state-sponsored hacking entities to launch multiple cyber-attack operations against the United States" and that TP-Link, through its Chinese supply-chain ties, is subject to Chinese national data laws that "require Chinese citizens and firms to support PRC intelligence services."
TP-Link has denied all of these allegations. The company says it is an independent American entity with no connections to the Chinese Communist Party, and that its US operations store American user data within the United States. "TP-Link vigorously disputes any allegation that its products present national security risks to the United States," a company spokesperson has said. CEO Jeffrey Chao has publicly stated he has never had connections with the CCP.
Manufacturing Wi-Fi 7 hardware in India, through Indian EMS partners, under the Make in India initiative, gives TP-Link a supply chain that is geographically distinct from its Chinese heritage — a credential that matters to regulators and enterprise procurement teams in markets where Chinese-origin hardware faces barriers. Critically, the FCC's Conditional Approval framework requires applicants to demonstrate that hardware is not just assembled elsewhere, but that design, development, and manufacturing all occur outside the United States' restricted scope — meaning a product designed in China but assembled in India may not automatically qualify.
Does India Assembly Resolve TP-Link's National Security Question?
It does not, according to the legal framework US government bodies have cited. The central concern regulators have raised about TP-Link is not where its access points are physically assembled. It is whether the company remains subject to China's National Intelligence Law.
Article 7 of China's National Intelligence Law states that all Chinese organizations and citizens shall "support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law." A 2020 Department of Homeland Security advisory concluded that Chinese firms are "required to secretly share data with the PRC government or other entities upon request, even if that request is illegal under the jurisdiction in which these firms operate." Senators Tom Cotton and Jim Risch, chairs of the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees respectively, have both cited this law in letters urging bans on TP-Link products.
The Texas AG's lawsuit goes further: it alleges that because many of TP-Link's parts are imported from China, the manufacturer is subject to Chinese national data laws requiring companies to support intelligence services by disclosing user data. TP-Link denies that any such obligation applies to TP-Link Systems Inc., which it characterizes as a fully independent US company with no Chinese government relationship. The company's 2024 restructuring — formally separating TP-Link Systems Inc. (Irvine, California) from TP-Link Technologies Co., Ltd. (Shenzhen) — was specifically designed to establish that legal independence. Whether courts and regulators will ultimately accept that separation as complete remains unresolved.
No named independent security audit with public results has either confirmed backdoors in TP-Link products or definitively cleared them. Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security noted in a 2025 analysis that TP-Link's security risks "may have more to do with its ties to China than any specific technical threats" — and that the broader router industry, most of which also sources from China, shares many of the same exposure vectors. PC Magazine has noted that no direct evidence of government-directed spying through TP-Link devices has ever been disclosed.
What TP-Link's India manufacturing does accomplish: it creates hardware assembled in a jurisdiction with no equivalent mandatory data-sharing law, using Indian EMS partners rather than Chinese factories. For procurement teams in markets where the origin of assembly is a qualifying criterion — government tenders, certain enterprise frameworks, or markets that track Make in India certification — that credential has real value. It does not, by itself, resolve questions about firmware provenance, chipset sourcing, or the legal status of the company's Chinese-origin supply chain.
What India Enterprise Buyers Should Consider Now
For Indian enterprise IT buyers, the practical consequence of TP-Link India's Wi-Fi 7 launch is accelerated access to next-generation wireless hardware at competitive price points, from a vendor with deep local market presence. The Omada EAP770 is positioned for exactly the environments — hospitals, campuses, hotels, retail — where Wi-Fi 7's density and latency improvements deliver the clearest return.
For procurement managers at central government and defense-adjacent organizations, the same national security considerations that US agencies have raised are worth reviewing independently before committing to infrastructure based on TP-Link hardware. India's government has previously issued security advisories about TP-Link firmware vulnerabilities in specific router models. The Indian government's own evolving stance on Chinese-origin technology in critical infrastructure is an active policy area.
For the broader networking industry, TP-Link's India manufacturing move is a leading indicator. If the strategy pays off — regulatory credentialing through local assembly, competitive pricing, rapid Wi-Fi 7 adoption in a large market — other vendors with Chinese manufacturing roots will face intensified pressure to demonstrate equivalent supply chain diversification. The FCC's Conditional Approval framework, which requires disclosure of full ownership structure, bill of materials, firmware country of origin, and a US manufacturing onshoring plan, sets the bar for what "supply-chain clean" will mean going forward. India-assembled hardware is a step in that direction. It is not the destination.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is TP-Link banned in the US?
New TP-Link consumer routers are barred from receiving FCC authorization in the US under a March 23, 2026 order that prohibits all foreign-made consumer-grade routers from entering the US market. Existing, already-authorized TP-Link devices in use are not recalled and may continue operating. TP-Link is seeking Conditional Approval from the FCC — a process that requires full supply-chain and ownership disclosure — and has stated it plans to establish US-based manufacturing.
What does India's 6 GHz spectrum delicensing mean for Wi-Fi 7?
India's Department of Telecommunications delicensed 500 MHz of spectrum in the 5925–6425 MHz band in January 2026, enabling Wi-Fi 7 deployments that rely on the 6 GHz band for their highest-performance features. Without this change, Wi-Fi 7 devices in India could only use the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, significantly limiting the standard's throughput and channel-width advantages. India's decision aligns it with the US and EU, though India delicensed only the lower half of the 6 GHz band.
Does TP-Link manufacturing in India resolve its national security concerns?
No, according to US government officials and lawmakers who have raised the concerns. The central issue is whether TP-Link remains subject to China's National Intelligence Law, which requires Chinese organizations to cooperate with intelligence services — an obligation that applies regardless of where hardware is assembled. TP-Link denies these obligations apply to it as a US-based company, and no confirmed backdoor has been found in its products, but the legal question about its Chinese supply-chain ties remains unresolved in US courts and regulatory proceedings.
What is the Omada EAP770 and who is it for?
The Omada EAP770 is a tri-band Wi-Fi 7 ceiling-mount enterprise access point designed for high-density environments such as university campuses, hospitals, hotels, and retail spaces. It integrates with TP-Link's Omada Software Defined Networking platform for centralized cloud-based management and is now among the first Wi-Fi 7 enterprise access points manufactured in India following the country's January 2026 spectrum delicensing.
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