Well, that came sooner than I’d expected. Hot on the heels of the news that the U.S. government had banned all foreign-made routers that weren’t already on sale or approved by the FCC, word came on April 13 that the Feds have granted Netgear an exemption through October 1, 2027. It will allow the company to sell new router models made overseas.

Given that we recommend two Netgear models in our guide to the best WiFi routers, we’re glad to hear that we won’t be deprived of new routers from one of the best router brands in the business. Although we’re left scratching our heads at the pickle in which this puts the rest of the major router companies.

Neither Netgear nor the U.S. government made much of the news publicly. Rather, it was Bloomberg that noticed on April 14 that Netgear had filed a form for an exemption from the ban, and that the FCC had granted it. Neither party has said why.

Netgear will still have to submit each new router design to the FCC for approval to sell it in the U.S., just as router manufacturers had been doing before the ban. But at least Netgear won’t be stuck selling old models in the U.S. as it introduces new routers to the rest of the world. We don’t yet know which routers Netgear has on deck for later this year, nor for 2027. But whatever they are we know that, thanks to the exemption, America is now likely to receive them.

Should you hold off on the purchase of a Netgear router now that we know the next generation of Netgear routers is heading our way? Not necessarily. The next evolutionary step in WiFi, WiFi 8, was planned to roll out slowly this year. And those plans are now up in the air, thanks to the ban. Netgear hadn’t announced a WiFi 8 router for 2026, and WiFi 7 is still plenty fast for most users. If you need a new router right now, Netgear or not, I say go ahead and buy it.

The U.S.’s ban, which remains in effect, means that companies (other than Netgear) cannot sell new, foreign-made models stateside in the near term, if not by the letter of the law, then by the practicalities of it. Nearly every router by every company is made in one or another Southeast Asian country. Except for a few made in Texas by Starlink, almost every router brand suddenly had a crisis overnight when the FCC took the drastic move to enact the ban on March 23, 2026.

Manufacturers are free to continue importing and selling routers that are already on sale in the U.S. But new models introduced later in 2026, 2027, or beyond would be ineligible for FCC approval unless they’re built here of mostly American-made components. Building new factories in the U.S. to manufacture all these future routers would take time, and it’s not even a given that all router brands would find it economically sensible. Factories are major investments, American labor is expensive, and if there’s no profit in the end, it’s not all that inconceivable that some brands would just pull out of the American market.

Given the fact that the ban hollows out nearly the entirety of the WiFi router industry in the U.S., and would now grant Netgear a near-total monopoly on new routers, I’d wager that more exemptions for more companies will soon follow. TP-Link, Asus, Eero, Linksys, and D-Link will be sure to have an answer now that Netgear is, however temporarily, Uncle Sam’s favorite.