7:32 a.m. | Updated with official announcement

Koji Sasahara/Associated PressSoftbank’s president, Masayoshi Son, left, and Dan Hesse, Sprint’s chief executive, last October. The Dish Network has also made an offer for Sprint.

SoftBank of Japan has reached a tentative agreement to win national security clearance for its $20.1 billion bid for Sprint Nextel, surmounting one of the biggest hurdles to the deal.

To pass the review by a government panel, both SoftBank and Sprint agreed to a number of concessions, people briefed on the matter said on Tuesday. For example, the companies will give the United States veto power over a director on the new board of Sprint, the member who would be responsible for overseeing compliance with national security, these people said.

The government panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, has signed off on the deal, the two companies announced Wednesday morning.

With the panel’s decision, SoftBank faces only two major remaining hurdles. The Federal Communications Commission will soon resume reviewing the Sprint deal, a process that is expected to finish in a week or so, according to people briefed on the process. The regulator halted its work earlier this year at the request of the Justice Department.

Sprint shareholders must also approve the SoftBank bid. A vote on the transaction is currently scheduled for June 12.

The panel’s approval comes amid a campaign by Dish Network, a rival bidder for Sprint. Dish, in part, sought to drum up fears based on SoftBank’s ties to Chinese telecommunications equipment makers.

“Without U.S. ownership and control of Sprint, SoftBank’s reliance on Chinese equipment manufacturers raises significant national security concerns,” Dish wrote on nationalsecuritymatters.com, a Web site the company set up as part of its media blitz.

Several lawmakers have also expressed wariness over the deal. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York sent a letter to the Treasury Department and the F.C.C. last week urging them to look closely “to ensure that our nation’s security is not placed at risk.”

Over the years, concerns about the country’s safety have thwarted several planned takeovers, including a Chinese oil company’s bid for the oil company Unocal and a Dubai port operator’s effort to buy several American assets.

At the heart of the worries over Sprint are SoftBank’s use of equipment manufactured by Huawei and ZTE, companies that lawmakers have contended are closely tied to the Chinese government. Critics have argued that letting their products into important national infrastructure could leave the company exposed to potential cyber-attacks on power plants and other vital assets.

SoftBank currently uses some equipment from the Chinese manufacturers in its network outside the United States. And Clearwire, an American wireless network operator that Sprint is trying to buy, has some Huawei products in parts of its network.

Dish Network, which is seeking to wrest Sprint away from SoftBank with a $25.5 billion offer, has rolled out a media campaign in Washington that raises fears about a foreign takeover of a major American telecommunications company.

The campaign comes despite existing foreign investment in the United States wireless industry. Vodafone of Britain owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless, while Deutsche Telekom of Germany owns a majority stake in T-Mobile US.

Since announcing their deal agreement last fall, SoftBank and Sprint have been in close touch with government agencies to allay fears. The goal was to ease the proposed transaction’s passage through the review by Cfius (pronounced SIF-ee-us), which is comprised by several agencies led by the Treasury secretary.

The panel’s examination is kept highly confidential, and buyers do not always know exactly why their proposals are rejected.

To address the matter of Chinese equipment, SoftBank and Sprint, as part of earlier concessions, pledged to remove Huawei equipment from Clearwire’s network. the task will cost about $1 billion, according to a person briefed on the matter. They also agreed to give the government a say over non-American vendors used by Sprint.

Dish, which is not subject to a review by Cfius, has not specifically pledged to remove the Huawei equipment from Clearwire. “We believe the U.S. government should proceed with deliberation and caution in turning over assets of national strategic importance — such as the Sprint fiber backbone and wireless networks — to a foreign-controlled entity with significant ties to China,” a spokesman for Dish said in a statement on Tuesday. “Oversight and accountability for our national network infrastructure is critical at a time when offshore cyberattacks continue to rise.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 05/29/2013, on page B4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: SoftBank And Sprint In Agreement.

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/softbank-and-sprint-said-to-win-national-security-clearance-for-deal/?partner=rss&emc=rss