Verizon and AT&T will begin activating 5G C-Band spectrum on January 19 after weeks-long delays to accommodate the U.S. Department of Transportation. Despite these delays, eleven airline CEOs have penned a critical letter to the DOT and chief executives at both companies to describe an “economic calamity” that will occur on Wednesday.
FCC down with 5G
The Federal Communications Commission auctioned 5G C-Band spectrum a year ago. Verizon and AT&T collectively spent $69 billion for licenses last February. Both carriers were cleared to start using the newly available spectrum for expanded 5G networking capabilities before the end of 2021.
What followed is a late complaint by airline executives to the Department of Transportation about concerns over airplane safety equipment performance near 5G C-band towers. The two carriers agreed to a month-long delay before activating their licenses spectrum. An additional round of delays followed, but both carriers are cleared to activate 5G C-band on Wednesday.
Airline execs promise disaster
Meanwhile, CEOs from eleven major airline companies wrote to the Department of Transportation this week to paint a dark picture of what the rest of their week looks like after 5G C-band goes live.
We are writing with urgency to request that 5G be implemented everywhere in the country except within the approximate 2 miles of airport runways at affected airports as defined by the FAA on
January 19, 2022. […]First, we understand that most of the 50 large airports that were identified by the FAA for relief will still be subject to flight restrictions on January 19. The FAA’s statement yesterday minimizes the fact that they are not granting relief to airports that are used by most of the traveling and shipping public. Unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and shipping public will essentially be grounded. This means that on a day like yesterday, more than 1,100 flights and 100,000 passengers would be subjected to cancellations, diversions or delays.
Second, flight restrictions will not be limited to poor weather operations. Because radio altimeters provide critical information to other safety and navigation systems in modern airplanes, multiple modern safety systems on aircraft will be deemed unusable causing a much larger problem than what we knew on January 5, 2022. Airplane manufacturers have informed us that there are huge swaths of the operating fleet that may need to be indefinitely grounded. In addition to the chaos caused domestically, this lack of usable widebody aircraft could potentially strand tens of thousands of Americans overseas.
The letter, first reported by Reuters, goes on to say that “the nation’s commerce will grind to a halt.”
Given the short time frame and the exigency of this completely avoidable economic calamity, we
respectfully request you support and take whatever action necessary to ensure that 5G is deployed
except when towers are too close to airport runways until the FAA can determine how that can be safely accomplished without catastrophic disruption.
With economic calamity and catastrophic disruption promised, the rest of the week might be the biggest for 5G C-band spectrum yet.
9to5Mac’s Take
It’s difficult to decipher how much of the letter from airline CEOs is hyperbole, but it’s harder to imagine additional delays to 5G C-band spectrum being used.
A common argument in favor of moving forward with 5G C-band is that it’s already live in Europe without disruption to airlines. There also doesn’t appear to be hard data pointing to airline safety equipment malfunctioning from 5G interference. That seems very important to this story.
It’s understandable that the FCC and DOT aren’t on the same page when it comes to 5G, but the time to address these issues should have been before the spectrum auction last year. Now we wait with bated breath to learn what happens next.
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