Airlines start asking for permanent changes to C-band 5G
The airline industry has begun petitioning the FCC to make permanent changes to the operation of some 5G networks around airports.
“These concepts … would appear to not compromise wireless operators’ actual use cases while further assuring aviation safety and providing a workable RF environment against which future radio altimeters can be designed and built,” argued a group of airline officials who recently met with the FCC. The executives detailed their request in a filing to the FCC.
In a response, Verizon officials sought to downplay the topic.
“We continue to have positive discussions with the FAA and FCC, and progress is being made,” Verizon officials wrote in a statement to Light Reading when questioned on the topic. “We are encouraged to see the airlines making progress with these issues as well.”
AT&T officials declined to comment on the development.
But at least one analyst believes the airline industry is going too far.
“The proposal by the aviation community to codify the voluntary and temporary restrictions on C-band usage graciously indulged by AT&T and Verizon is the most outrageous proposition I have seen in 50 years of following FCC matters,” wrote Preston Padden, principal of Boulder Thinking. Padden previously was an official with the now-defunct C-Band Alliance, but noted that he filed his comment with the FCC on his own behalf.
“The FCC must just say ‘no,'” he wrote.
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