The quarrel between the FAA and the FCC about the upcoming 5G launch in the United States has just become the front page of business news, although the battle heated up greatly in early December.

This struggle is not only important in itself, but it illustrates a pathology that prevails in the United States: money theory and the public damn it.

The very short version is that Verizon and AT&T spent a lot of energy buying 5G spectrum rights in early 2020. Although (or as you can see, probably because of) rules, the FCC did not impose any restrictions on operators’ use of the rights they purchased. Meaningful restrictions. A group representing 10 airlines is booing that they have failed in the rulemaking stage and they are still trying to prevent the rollout of 5G until the safety of 5G operations involving airline altimeters is concerned. As we will see again, there is no interference in theory, but as Yogi Berra said, “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”

One of the reasons for the disagreement between the two parties is that airlines have much stricter safety requirements than communication providers, and this is for good reasons. The great unbaptized public is willing to do seemingly crazy things, such as entering aluminum orange juice cans and flying at crazy heights, because the airline has an extraordinary safety record. Their existence depends on the lack of perception of danger, although there is a higher obvious risk (look at the safety record of gliding, by contrast, most glider pilots are professional gliding sports). Therefore, their caution is deeply rooted and necessary for the survival of the industry.

From Reuters:

The CEOs of AT&T (TN) and Verizon Communications (VZ.N) rejected requests for postponement of the planned launch of new 5G wireless services on January 5 for aviation safety considerations, but proposed to temporarily adopt new safeguards.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Steve Dixon asked AT&T CEO John Stankey and Verizon CEO Hans Westberg to delay commercial deployment on Friday evening. More than two weeks.

The two wireless companies stated in a joint letter on Sunday that they would not deploy 5G around airports within six months, but refused to impose any broader restrictions on the use of C-band spectrum.

The Verge released Copy of Verizon Letter.

Reuters reported that American Airlines, which represents companies such as American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, FedEx, JetBlue Airways and UPS, are very excited. If wireless carriers do not climb down, they plan to apply for an emergency ban on Monday.

Wireless operators try to occupy the moral high ground by saying that the concessions they made in France are the same as the concessions they made in France, which should solve the problem. But even Reuters has made it clear that the French network is different from the American network:

FAA officials stated that the 5G spectrum used in France is farther away from the spectrum used by radio altimeters, and the power level used by 5G is lower than the power level authorized by the United States.

Verizon stated that it will initially only use the same range of spectrum as France, adding that it will take several years to use the additional spectrum. Verizon added that the larger U.S. restricted zone around U.S. airports is “to compensate for the subtle differences in power levels between the two countries.”

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), which represents 50,000 employees of 17 airlines, wrote on Twitter on Sunday that pilots, airlines, manufacturers, and others “have no other incentive to delay 5G other than safety. What do they do? Look… what are we asking these questions for during the holidays?”

This gives an idea of ??what airlines see within the scope of the problem:

(Thread) I missed this a bit during the holidays, but the FAA is throwing a lot of shit over 5g, which may have a huge impact on air travel. FAA is very worried that 5g radio may affect various radio altimeters…https://t.co/JZsZeYkdwU

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) December 28, 2021

In the letter, Verizon also brazenly stated that airlines have been upgrading their altimeters. Please. How many airlines are involved, and more importantly, traffic control towers and other airport equipment that are not controlled by airlines?

The position of the wireless carrier may seem reasonable until you realize that they cannot actually guarantee it. Even if their equipment really swears to God that it will not affect the spectrum used by operators, there is no guarantee that they will not. Comment from AVWeb:

Unfortunately, people who are attracted by the magic of RF on a personal level, from HAM on the street to engineers testing equipment in the laboratory, have learned that just because you want to transmit on a set of frequencies does not mean You will not spread to a large group of other people. In addition, the design of the old equipment did not take into account the restrictions that no one thought of at the time.

Mass-produced cheap RF equipment is one of the most serious offenders. When the deployment is “completed” to achieve good coverage, the deployment of 5G base stations is estimated to reach millions, which is why this huge infrastructure deployment remains profitable The only way for the carrier is to make the equipment cheap and quick to install. Inexpensive means there may be QC issues, which means there may be a large number of unwanted emissions (including fly spurious emissions). Quick installation means that people will not walk around for field strength surveys to ensure that the antennas are not aimed so that they will bounce or even launch something directly when they arrive at the last method of the local airport. Although flying over the 5G coverage area at any time will not cause your radar altimeter to be significantly unstable, laboratory tests have proven that considering the absolute amount of interference, interference interaction is likely to occur, and take this seriously; aviation The environment in which electronic equipment is designed and operated-definitely not a world covered by ERP transmitters in the range of millions of kilowatts, 24/7, 365 large-bandwidth broadcasts.

Please note that the discussion above only covers base stations. Passengers have this bad way and don’t always follow instructions to turn off their phones or put them in airplane mode. Consumer devices can also send signals that are wider than the authorized 5G frequency.

This is forming a battle between Godzilla and Mothra. Although the airlines lost the first round, apparently due to the FCC being captured by its industry and a large amount of lobbying spending, one thing that the Covid crisis has established is to treat air travel and delivery as an indispensable foundation The power of the facility. 5G is not. United Airlines has already had to pay pilots three times the normal rate to allow them to pay for Covid’s home expenses. If some of the available pools will not come in because they want to fly under 5G for at least a week before they appear, what will happen?Especially considering the warnings, such as This safety alert for airline pilots started in early December:

Aircraft operations and radar altimeter interference from 5G-effective January 5, 2022

Earlier this year, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted the mobile wireless industry radio spectrum to run 5G transmissions in the “C-band” or 3.7-3.98 GHz, adjacent to the spectrum used by radar altimeters. Although the aviation industry has notified the FCC of the need to ensure that radar altimeters are free from 5G interference since 2018, it has still been approved. Canada also approved 5G in C-Band, but restricted the use of C-Band near 26 airports and other measures to ensure aviation safety.

Radar altimeter interference from 5G signals may manifest as a loss of radar height information, or worse, unknowingly generating incorrect radar height information. There have been fatal accidents related to incorrect radar altitude. The most recent one was Turkish Airlines flight 1951 in Amsterdam in 2009.

The altitude information from the radar altimeter has been deeply integrated into aircraft systems and automation. The latest aircraft use it to change the control quality of the aircraft and prepare systems such as ground spoilers and thrust reversers before landing. This is in addition to the radio altimeter used for automatic landing and category (CAT) II/III and required navigation performance (RNP) AR approaches.
On November 2, 2021, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued the Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB), reminding operators to pay attention to the strict restrictions that may exist in flight operations to ensure safety. Please visit the following website link: https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgSAIB.nsf/dc7bd4f27e5f107486257221005f0 69d/27ffcbb45e6157e986258781004ad19/$

If American Airlines goes to court, we will see it soon. stay tuned.