Verizon and AT&T, locked in a battle with the aviation industry for months over the expansion of 5G that was set to go into effect Jan. 5, 2022, have agreed to a two-week delay, pushing the new date to Jan. 19.
The wireless companies have agreed to use additional protections in certain areas — mainly around the nation’s busiest airports — over the next six months, according to a report in Politico.
These protections are already in use in France, according to airline officials.
The airline industry was set to file lawsuits to block the expansion of 5G, which poses the risk of interfering with some avionics. That has been put on hold, according to the Politico report.
But the 5G expansion is inevitable: “AT&T and Verizon shelled out more than $80 billion for the 5G airwaves at issue and have signaled repeatedly that they expect to be able to put that spectrum to use,” it notes.
But the aviation industry, including the FAA, say the 5G expansion poses risks to aviation that must be mitigated in the interests of safety.
Read the full Politico story here.
Have you ever attended an airport board meeting manned with many people that don’t know bean dip about airplanes?
Well, the FCC and the FAA aren’t much different.
Having said that, the last explanation I read of the frequencies used by 5G and the frequencies used by radar altimeters are “Miles apart” in layman’s terms.
It would be like your CB radio interfering with your local TV station.
I try to learn more about this but if you google “5G frequencies” it doesn’t seem possible to get a straight answer.
But so far I don’t think this is the problem it is being made out to be.
FCC knows what it assigned to this band. They should have known it would interfere with radar. Especially when used for absolute altimeters. So this is a problem of the FCC’s making by not conferring with already assigned/licensed/typed users PRIOR to granting the licenses for these freqs for 5G.
What I would like to know is why is it the responsibility of the aviation industry to compensate for the short comings of the 5G network. They should never be allowed to play in this playground in the first place.
We are giving them too much rope in this issue and give an inch and they take a mile.