US Government Requests Two-Week Delay for 5G Deployment, Citing Aviation Safety (reuters.com) 36
Reuters reports:
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday asked AT&T and Verizon Communications to delay the planned January 5 introduction of new 5G wireless service over aviation safety concerns. In a letter Friday seen by Reuters, Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Steve Dickson asked AT&T Chief Executive John Stankey and Verizon Chief Executive Hans Vestberg for a delay of no more than two weeks as part of a "proposal as a near-term solution for advancing the co-existence of 5G deployment in the C-Band and safe flight operations."
The aviation industry and FAA have raised concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters that could disrupt flights.... Earlier Friday the two companies accused the aerospace industry of seeking to hold C-Band spectrum deployment "hostage until the wireless industry agrees to cover the costs of upgrading any obsolete altimeters." Buttigieg and Dickson said under the framework "commercial C-band service would begin as planned in January with certain exceptions around priority airports...." The carriers, which won the spectrum in an $80 billion government auction, previously agreed to precautionary measures for six months to limit interference...
Wireless industry group CTIA said 5G is safe and spectrum is being used in about 40 other countries.
The aviation industry and FAA have raised concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters that could disrupt flights.... Earlier Friday the two companies accused the aerospace industry of seeking to hold C-Band spectrum deployment "hostage until the wireless industry agrees to cover the costs of upgrading any obsolete altimeters." Buttigieg and Dickson said under the framework "commercial C-band service would begin as planned in January with certain exceptions around priority airports...." The carriers, which won the spectrum in an $80 billion government auction, previously agreed to precautionary measures for six months to limit interference...
Wireless industry group CTIA said 5G is safe and spectrum is being used in about 40 other countries.
Only in the US? (Score:2)
I know why this is probably an issue in the US, but why does it appear to be an issue *only* in the US?
FTA: "Wireless industry group CTIA said 5G is safe and spectrum is being used in about 40 other countries."
And everyone in aviation design I talk to seems to basically say the same: The design of the radar altimeter is shit, but there are no technical issues.
Re:Only in the US? (Score:5, Informative)
but why does it appear to be an issue *only* in the US?
Observer bias.
France's aviation regulator has blocked the installation of 5G near airports and issued warnings to pilots.
Australia's ACMA has run simulations and is actively watching the situation since they identified interference can occur as well despite the guardband being 3x larger than the USA's.
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Re: Only in the US? (Score:1)
Maybe there is more to this (Score:2)
What are a few more weeks where that is certainly nowhere near enough time to make the needed Aviation adjustments
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/l... [nih.gov]
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Does it occur to anyone that this concern just now coming up is a bit late in the game of 5G?
Like who is responsible for not thinking about this years ago?
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No one is responsible for that, because it was thought about years ago. And determined it wasn't an issue.
This is just getting cold feet, it seems, after all the aviation fuckups in the US.
That's.. All I can think of.
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And determined it wasn't an issue.
And yet all simulations based on the same assumptions from a few years ago show it is an issue.
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Determined by the cell-phone industry to be not an issue, not determined by the airlines to be not an issue. To make it not a potential issue, the airlines would have to update some of their equipment.
From TFA:
"Verizon and AT&T both said they received the letter and were reviewing it. Earlier Friday the two companies accused the aerospace industry of seeking to hold C-Band spectrum deployment "hostage until the wireless indus
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Re: Maybe there is more to this (Score:2)
Delay all the flight for 2 weeks (Score:2)
They should rather delay all the flights for 2 weeks.
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Based on recent headlines, I thought the flights were already all delayed that much.
Some people need to feel powerful (Score:3)
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What countries? Countries like Australia where the ACMA is actively monitoring the situation after their own simulations determined the level of interference breaches ITU regulations? Countries like France which has limited 5G deployments near airports for the same issue?
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Have you any evidence that other politicians are not?
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Could you please point to the specifications that you think the aircraft violate?
Where have I heard 'We just need 2 weeks'? (Score:2)
And from the government no less. How about a response of, 'just say no'.
5G is multiple band/Freqencies. (Score:4, Informative)
To help you understand the issue that Verison and ATT have, is they bought the bands that are faster, but shorter distance.
So they would be better in high density metropolitan areas. The problem is those same areas have lots of airports.
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Other vendors do not have this problem.
Australia disagrees, and their 5G deployments are 500MHz lower than the USA's
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Jesus how many times are you going to repeat yourself?
This is a story on the USA bandwidth no one cares about what Australia is doing or what France is thinking about doing.
It's not even the same spectrum your harping on a apples to oranges issue.
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This is a story on the USA bandwidth no one cares about what Australia is doing or what France is thinking about doing.
This. We need to kick the barbarians off the American internet.
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This is a story on the USA bandwidth no one cares about what Australia
I will continue to repeat myself every time some moron says "why is it only USA?" or "why is it only band X". The answer is it's not. I mean yeah it is if you chose to live in your fantasy world and continue to ignore the evidence that you are wrong and the world around you is in fact having problems people claim they aren't having.
We have a lot of idiots on Slashdot. I'll happily reply to every one of them.
It's not even the same spectrum your harping on a apples to oranges issue.
No. It's a few hundred MHz lower thanks to a larger guardband from the affected devices. And still a
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If aviation equipment was sensitive to out of band emissions (and not just out of band, but hundreds of MHz out of band) and this was known years ago, they should have done something about it years ago. It's not enough the flying buses get to monopolize the skies, they get to monopolize the spectrum as well?
Re: 5G is multiple band/Freqencies. (Score:2)
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You would be extremely hard-pressed to find RD equipment that isn't considerably sensitive to "transmissions several hundreds of [H]ertz away from its designated spectrum".
In this case, the equipment is sensitive to transmissions several hundred megahertz away, but considering the age of the designs and the previous uses of that spectrum, that susceptibility is not unreasonable. Regulators are radically changing the environment.
Cancel 5G (Score:2)
5G in my area is slower than the 4G deployment (West Denver). I don't understand why anyone would want a slower experience.
Re:Cancel 5G (Score:4, Informative)
That's because almost all the roll out in the US of 5G.. Isn't.
It's 3G or 4G base transmission speeds at best over 5G frequencies. The infrastructure of the phone companies is horribly out of date, basically.
The US has the best coverage for 5G so far from what I read, but also the lowest speeds of any western country that rolled it out.
Re:Cancel all flights (Score:2)
Nope.
Cancel all flights.
Those aircraft are unsafe.
Two weeks? (Score:1)
It's a real problem (Score:1)
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The problem is the FAA should have approved non-defective radio altimeter designs that stayed within their allotted bandwidth decades ago, instead of ones that splat (and receive) signals from all over the nearby spectrum.
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In a nice easy make-believe world the radio pulse goes down from the aircraft, bounces off a nice perpendicular ground and returns to the aircraft with a predictable Doppler shift easy-pease. In the real world the ground is cluttered with multiple non-perpendicular reflective surfaces, unknown numbers of radio transmitters both moving and stationary, other aircraft all bouncing radio signals over unknown multiple paths heterodyning signals adding and subtracting from each other.
In other worlds radar is comp
Of course (Score:2)
If they don't get enough people vaccinated, the 5G-controlled zombie mob won't be able to overpower the remaining anti-vax kooks. Unfortunately, it's been taking too long to get enough peasants to comply and the batteries in the mind-control nanobots don't last forever; thus the boosters. Everyone knows this. Unfortunately, I found out after I got the jab, so I'm just going to wear a tinfoil hat and hope for the best.