Telecoms and airlines postpone the ‘5G war’ in the US for two weeks

The main telecommunications operators in the United States have decided to delay the deployment of the 5G enhanced networks scheduled for Wednesday, January 5, by two weeks. The fear of the airlines about the possibility that certain frequencies could cause interference in the takeoff and landing technology has been stronger than the desire of the operators to start making profitable their investments in the new cellular technology, estimated at more than 70,000 million dollars (62,000 million euros)

The US airline industry, led by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), considers that the radioelectric spectrum of the 5G between 3.7 GHz and 3.98 GHz it can fatally interfere with flight equipment. Specifically, this band could distort the reading of aircraft electronic altimeters, which use frequency ranges between 4.2 GHz and 4.4 GHz. The airlines consider that the radioelectric blank space between the two frequencies is barely 500 MHz. it is insufficient to fully guarantee the safety of aircraft operations. For these reasons, the airline industry has mobilized all its power of political pressure to prevent the new mobile networks from turning on, especially in areas close to airports. And the provisional result is a victory for the aeronautical giants since AT&T and Verizon, the two leaders of the US market, have agreed to postpone until January 19 the commissioning of their base stations with this especially valuable 5G in terms of speed, capacity and latency.

“At the request of the US Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, we have voluntarily agreed to an additional two-week delay in our deployment of C-band 5G services“AT&T said in an emailed statement.” We also remain committed to mitigating the six-month buffer zone and know that aviation security and 5G can coexist and are confident that further collaboration and technical assessment will dissipate any problem “, as explained by these sources to the Fox Business portal.

What now remains in the air is what will happen during these two weeks of grace. Nobody knows what studies are will board during these days to reassure the FAA on the safety of the so-called C Band of telephony. In fact, these same radioelectric resources coexist in the two industries without apparent discomfort in other countries of the world, as in France or Canada, for example. The first consequence of the telecom truce provisionally freezes the legal confrontation between the FAA, the airlines and the US Department of Transportation against the airlines and the Federal Communications Commission, the body that approved the use of these frequencies.

Looking forward to the next few weeks, Airlines for America (A4A) Business Association he has already put his lawyers to work on a lawsuit of unpredictable scope since “airplanes will not be able to rely on radio altimeters for numerous flight procedures and, therefore, will not be able to land at certain airports,” according to the A4A. This same employers are mobilizing public opinion by ensuring that if deployment were allowed near these airports, the new 5G “could have dire consequences, such as the need to divert or cancel thousands of flights, which would displace millions of passengers” they warn.