In advance of this week's hearing on aviation interference issues and the 5G C-band rollout, some spectrum policy experts and fans of 5G took aim at the Federal Aviation Administration‘s efforts to delay the rollout over interference concerns.
They made their case for the Federal Communications Commission in the FCC v. FAA “conflict” in a letter to the leadership of the House Subcommittee on Aviation, which held a marathon hearing titled “Finding the Right Frequency: 5G Deployment & Aviation Safety.”
The FCC auctioned C-band spectrum for 5G after concluding that it could co-exist with aviation safety systems in nearby spectrum. The FAA disagreed and the rollout by C-band spectrum auction winners AT&T and Verizon was delayed and modified over those FAA concerns.
But in their letter, representatives from more than a half-dozen groups and companies, including New America's Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge, said the U.S. has a history of stewarding new wireless tech rollouts while ensuring the safety of existing users, which they argue was the case with the FCC’s approval of the rollout.
“The recent experience of the FAA issuing safety alerts regarding the rollout of 5G in the C-band just before it was set to launch, an insinuation of the danger of 5G transmission to altimeter operations with no empirical evidence, and the subsequent political brinkmanship to litigate the issue more than a year after rules were made public, was unfortunate and avoidable,” they told the legislators. “It needlessly impugns the safety of both aviation and 5G.”
Congress should take the FCC’s side, they argued. In any event, the groups added, any issues with interference to altimeters, which tell planes how close they are to the ground when bad weather makes visual assessments problematic, can be handled “with minimal cost and disruption.”
That letter notwithstanding, the Democratic leadership at this week's hearing was decidedly on the side of the FAA. There was plenty criticism to go around over the lack of communications and coordination between the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which represents government spectrum users; the FCC, which oversees commercial users; and the apparent disconnect between FCC and FAA engineers over the interference potential. ■
