The big 5G fix for airplanes will cost just $26 million

The years-long, high-stakes public relations battle between the US airline industry and the US wireless industry appears to be heading toward a final conclusion. And the final price tag for the solution? $26,049,810.

That finding, from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is pretty incredible. It’s the total cost of replacing radio altimeters on around 180 airplanes and putting new radio altimeter filters onto another 820 – all of the remaining planes involved in the situation. The modifications are designed to eliminate the potential for 5G transmissions in C-band spectrum to interfere with airplane altimeters, which can be used in takeoffs and landings in low-visibility environments.

In a federal filing, the FAA broke down all the estimated costs in the $26 million figure: For example, each filter costs around $4,000 and installation costs are around $85 per hour.

To put this all into perspective, the $26 million it will cost to modify all the altimeters in question is about 0.027% of the $95 billion that Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and others spent on C-band spectrum during an FCC auction in 2021. It’s also roughly 0.186% of the $13.9 billion that satellite operators including SES and Intelsat are getting to modify their operations to make room for 5G in the C-band.

Further, $26 million is a pretty incredible amount considering the fight between the US airline industry and the US wireless industry reached the highest levels of the federal government early last year.

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