Press release distribution for hardware and FCC rules

You may announce a radio product before it holds FCC equipment authorisation; you may not offer it for sale. The pre-order link, not the prose, is what turns an announcement into marketing: 47 CFR 2.803 defines marketing broadly enough to include advertising for sale. The same rule publishes the exact notice that makes an early announcement permissible, so the practical answer is to put that notice in the release and take the buy button out of it.

If your product contains a radio — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, UWB, a wireless charger — there is a federal rule that reaches your launch announcement and almost nothing else in this series.

47 CFR § 2.803 governs the marketing of radiofrequency devices prior to equipment authorisation. It defines marketing broadly enough to catch a press release: "sale or lease, or offering for sale or lease, including advertising for sale or lease, or importation, shipment, or distribution for the purpose of selling or leasing or offering for sale or lease." The general rule is that no person may market such a device unless it has valid FCC equipment authorisation and meets the applicable labelling requirements.

The rule also tells you exactly how to announce early

This is the useful part, and it is routinely missed. The regulation permits a device to be advertised or displayed — at a trade show, in a launch announcement — before authorisation, provided the material carries a conspicuous notice. The rule publishes the wording:

This device has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.

For prototypes of authorised devices, an alternative is permitted: "Prototype. Not for Sale."

So a pre-authorisation announcement is available to you. What is not available is the same announcement with a "pre-order now" button, a price, or a link to a checkout — because that is offering for sale. The failure case in hardware press releases is not the announcement; it is the call to action attached to it, and the crowdfunding campaign launched alongside it.

This is not legal advice, the rule has details and exceptions this summary does not carry, and your regulatory consultant is the right reader for the draft. But the disclaimer text above is published, free, and short enough to paste, which makes omitting it a strange saving.

Note also that the syndicated copies of your release live on domains you cannot edit. If the notice is missing from the original, it is missing from every republication, permanently, on pages you have no ability to correct. Nothing about a wire placement is retractable — a point worth internalising more generally in what a press release cannot do.

Origin claims have a defined standard

Hardware releases carry origin claims more than any other sector, and the standard is bright. 16 CFR § 323.2 permits an unqualified "Made in the United States" claim only where the final assembly or processing occurs in the United States, all significant processing occurs in the United States, and all or virtually all ingredients or components are made and sourced in the United States.

Most hardware companies who say "Made in USA" mean "Assembled in the USA from imported components," which is a qualified claim the rule accommodates and which is not weaker in a release — it is more specific, and specificity is what a trade reporter can use.

Ship dates are the claim that ages worst

A press release is durable, dated and syndicated across dozens of domains. A ship date in one is a public commitment recorded in a place you cannot revise.

The disciplined version states what is known — "engineering validation builds complete; production units expected in Q1 2027, subject to certification" — rather than a date with no conditions attached. If you are running a crowdfunding campaign in parallel, the release is the document backers will quote back to you when the date moves, and it will move.

What the wires do, and the one thing they charge for

Hardware is unrestricted at every network in this survey, with one exception at the edges: EIN Presswire bans firearms including airsoft, paintball and parts, and PRUnderground bans them including any mention in the release. A hardware company shipping an accessory that touches that category can be refused on the whole announcement — the published refusals by category sets out where routes remain.

The cost that does bite hardware is images. This is the sector where a release without a product photograph is close to useless, and the tier-one meter charges for them separately. On PR Newswire's 2024 domestic card, a logo is $595, an image, video or audio item is $490 each, a PDF is $490, and the base release covers 400 words with $325 per additional 100 on the US1 National circuit. A launch release with a logo and three product shots is $1,020 plus $595 plus $1,470 before a word of overage — $3,085, and a 700-word release adds $975 more.

The mid-market answers this differently: ACCESS Newswire and Newswire.com both publish unlimited words and images on their paid tiers, at $865 to $1,205 and $399 to $965 respectively. For an image-heavy hardware launch that difference dwarfs the difference in distribution. We priced every line on the Cision card separately, and there is a whole piece on what images actually do in a release.

What a release buys a hardware company

The hardware press works on embargoed review units and hands-on time. It does not work on wire feeds. A syndicated release will not produce a review, and it will not produce a hands-on.

What it produces is a dated public record on third-party domains — useful for retail and distributor conversations, for a certification milestone, for a funding announcement, and as a citation in a data room. That is genuine and it is bounded. The outlet counts attached to these packages are largely automated republication to near-identical affiliate pages; what a 500-outlet claim counts is worth reading before comparing quotes on that number.

What we sell

We are a reseller: distribution bought from wire partners and marked up. Our packages run $599 to $899, take 250 to 1,200 words with no charge for the length, and include one image on both. We open every published URL and report what actually went live, marked as measured or as supplier-reported, and a sample report shows both labels in one table. We do not promise rankings, permanent pages, or that any named outlet will publish, and we do not review copy for FCC, CE or origin-claim compliance.

What we could not establish

No wire publishes a policy on unauthorised-device announcements, and none offers a review step for the § 2.803 notice. Business Wire, GlobeNewswire and ACCESS Newswire publish no content policy at all. We also could not verify any wire's handling of embargoes in writing — every network we asked treats embargo timing as an account-level arrangement rather than a published term, which for a hardware launch built around a trade show is worth pinning down before you book.