Pressure from airlines and the White House has finally paid off: the overseas deployment of 5G on C-band – the “queen band” of the new generation of mobile technology – is once again postponed amid fear for the aviation safety. After a final pass of arms in recent days, operators Verizon and AT&T have finally agreed to postpone the deployment of their 5G networks on the C band to January 19 following concerns about the potential interference that the latter could have on sensitive electronic devices fitted on airplanes – such as radio altimeters.
According to representatives of the airline industry, a draft agreement of the last hour was reached first with the telephone operator AT&T, then with Verizon, to delay again by 15 days the establishment of new frequency bands 5G. Information confirmed by a spokesperson for AT & T, who indicated on Tuesday that they had reached an agreement with the American authorities to “accept an additional period of two weeks for the deployment of the service”. As a reminder, the commissioning of 5G on the C band – and more particularly on the frequency bands 3.7-3.8 GHz – was to take place this Wednesday.
During this “two-week break”, changes made to installations at airports in particular will have to be examined by the air regulatory authority, the FAA, “to ensure that they meet all the safety conditions for flights” , indicate the two operators. The latter were allocated frequencies on this famous C band last February, following a call for tenders estimated at around 80 billion dollars.
France cited as an example by Verizon and AT&T
This new episode follows a letter sent last week to the two American operators by the United States Minister of Transport, Pete Buttigieg, and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the American aviation safety constable, Steve Dickson. In the letter, they called for a new two-week deadline to allow their agencies to further assess fears that commercial deployments on the C-band spectrum could interfere with the automatic landing systems used by some aircraft.
The response from operators was not long in coming. In a joint letter, AT&T CEO John Stankey and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg underlined their intention not to postpone this controversial deployment … citing the example of France. “If American airlines are allowed to make daily flights to France, then the same operating conditions should allow them to do so in the United States,” they argued. An argument that only partially holds, while the American spectrum used for 5G C-band deployments is closer to the frequencies used by aviation systems than C-band deployments carried out in France in the C-band. 3.5 GHz.
In France, where operators are also deploying their 5G networks on this famous C band (in this case on the 3.5 GHz band), the General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC) had already looked into the question. in 2020, by requiring additional technical analyzes before switching on any 5G antenna near an airport. This has not yet detected any dysfunction likely to disrupt the deployment of 5G networks in the territory.