Airlines Brace for Flight Restrictions in 5G Standoff

[dalton99a]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/airlines-brace-for-flight-restrictions-in-5g-standoff-11639929603

Airlines Brace for Flight Restrictions in 5G Standoff
Carriers are taking steps to prepare for potential FAA flight limits when a new 5G wireless service goes live Jan. 5
By Andrew Tangel and Drew FitzGerald
Updated Dec. 19, 2021 8:30 pm ET

Airlines have begun planning for possible flight disruptions from a new fifth-generation cellular service slated to go live early next year, industry officials said.

The early steps by airlines are a response to a Federal Aviation Administration order earlier this month. The directive outlined potential restrictions on landing in bad weather in up to 46 of the country’s largest metropolitan areas, where the new wireless service is scheduled to roll out starting Jan. 5.

The planning comes as U.S. regulators consider two proposals––one from the telecom industry and another from the aviation industry––for protecting aircraft from potential 5G interference with cockpit safety systems. Commonplace in modern air travel, they help planes land in poor weather, prevent crashes and avoid midair collisions.

The wireless industry has said that the planned service poses no risk to aircraft, while the Federal Aviation Administration has said it is worried that the frequencies the cellular signals use could possibly disrupt the cockpit systems.

[gopiscrap]

1. bet the phone companies are lying

[monkeyman1]

2. I've been in the tower business 47 yrs. & I'd say that's a good bet !!

[orleans]

3. oh jeez -- what does this mean? planes are gonna be dropping out of the sky? nt

[Sympthsical]

4. Was so confused by the Jan. 5th thing since I already have 5G

But I managed to find the answer.

C-band is all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum measured between 4 Ghz and 8 Ghz; but the sweet spot of C-band that Verizon and AT&T are buying up is between 3.7 to 3.98GHz. That is used by satellite transmissions, wifi devices, and weather.

It’s highly favorable for 5G networks because they need broad, directed channels to enable the fast transmission they’ve promised.

“The thing about mid-band spectrum is that it is very fast, there’s a lot of it, and it covers a lot of geography with just a small number of towers. It’s called the ‘Goldilocks spectrum,’ because it has all of those characteristics,” Mike Dano, editorial director of 5G and mobile strategies at Light Reading, told Emerging Tech Brew.

Most 5G phones carried by Verizon and AT&T in 2021 should have C-band support, including iPhone 12s and 13s, Samsung Galaxy S21 series, the Google Pixel 5, and the LG Wing.

https://www.morningbrew.com/emerging-tech/stories/2021/12/15/the-faa-s-5g-c-band-bans-explained

[Klaralven]

5. There doesn't seem to be a problem in the countries that have deployed 5G already

CTIA told the FCC this month that the nearly 40 countries using this spectrum "have already adopted rules and deployed hundreds of thousands of 5G base stations in the C-Band at similar frequencies and similar power levels—and in some instances, at closer proximity to aviation operations—than 5G will be in the US. None of these countries has reported any harmful interference with aviation equipment from these commercial deployments."

In Japan, "tens of thousands of 5G base stations have been deployed up to 4100 MHz—meaning there is just a 100-megahertz guard band between 5G operations and where radio altimeters operate," and there have been no claims of interference, CTIA wrote. "The US will have four times the guard band with this year's Phase 1 deployments (3700-3800 MHz), and two times the guard band following the full C-Band transition in 2023 (3700-3980 MHz)."

In Europe, where 3.4-3.8 GHz is used, 5G has been deployed on "more than ten thousand base stations in more than 20 countries for up to three years at power levels substantially similar to US C-Band 5G levels, without harmful interference claims—including in the band segment where Phase 1 5G operations will launch in the U.S. this year (3700-3800 MHz)," CTIA wrote. CTIA criticized an October 2020 report by RTCA (formerly the the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics), writing that "at least two hundred thousand 5G base stations are already operating today in at least a dozen countries with technical rules and proximity to radio altimeter operations that the RTCA Report would suggest should be seeing harmful interference, yet no known reports of interference exist."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/11/faa-forced-delay-in-5g-rollout-despite-having-no-proof-of-harm-to-aviation/

[Demsrule86]

6. The airlines could update their system and should IMHO...