Asia Tech Wire (June 25) -- The U.S. government is launching a new investigation into China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, China's trio of state-owned telecom operators, Reuters reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The White House claimed the move was due to concerns that the companies were using their cloud and Internet operations in the U.S. to access U.S. data and submit it to the Chinese government.

According to the report, the U.S. Department of Commerce is conducting the investigation.

The department has subpoenaed the three companies and has completed "risk-based analyses" of China Mobile and China Telecom, but the probe into China Unicom is not as in-depth.

Although the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has banned them from offering telephone and retail Internet services in the country, they still have a small presence here, such as providing cloud services and routing wholesale U.S. Internet traffic.

Reuters claimed it had found no evidence of any wrongdoing by these Chinese firms.

The Chinese embassy in Washington said it hoped the U.S. side would "stop suppressing Chinese companies under false pretexts," adding that China would continue to defend the rights and interests of Chinese companies.