The FAA, AT&T, and Verizon are getting closer to a solution for their 5G mess

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Regulators, carriers, and the airline industry are trying to figure out how C-band 5G will affect air travel. Through continued technical collaboration, the FAA, AT&T, and Verizon have agreed on steps that will enable more aircraft to safely use key airports while also enabling more towers to deploy 5.

Carriers have provided more precise data about the exact location of wireless transmitters and supported more thorough analysis of how 5G C-band signals interact with sensitive aircraft instruments, according to an FAA statement released on Friday. The FAA and airline industry were concerned that radar altimeters, which are vital instruments used to safely land planes in low visibility conditions, would not pick up the cell signals and give out inaccurate readings.

The carriers agreed to expand the agreed-upon buffer zones around certain airports in order to alleviate the fears of the people who benefited from the upgraded service. AT&T and Verizon expressed their frustration with the FAA. The FAA says it used data provided by the carriers to determine the size and shape of the areas around airports where 5G can be used.

The wireless providers should be allowed to safely turn on more towers as they deploy new 5G service in major markets across the United States. The New York Times reported that the CTIA, an advocacy group for cell carriers, said that the deals being made are a positive development that highlights the progress the wireless industry, aviation industry, FAA and FCC are making to ensure robust 5G service and safe flights.

It took a long time to get to this point. There were last-minute delays and agreements in the run-up to the carriers turning on their C-Band equipment. Brian Fung wrote an excellent report for CNN explaining why everything seemed to fall apart at the last moment.

The report is well worth a read for anyone looking to understand how this could happen, but to make a long story short, it comes down to a breakdown in communications between two government agencies, the FCC and the FAA. The FCC didn't get input from the FAA while it was in the planning and rule-making phase, despite the air safety regulator making several statements about it in public. There are a number of reasons why this happened, from an agency failing to pass on a letter from the FAA to the FCC to the letter being written almost a year late.

The FAA didn't have access to critical data from carriers. This seems to have been resolved based on the statement from the regulators today. There was a lot of confusion before the two industries started talking.

The analyst went further into detail about how it was difficult for the FAA to figure out what the proper lines of communication were with the FCC.

This is important because NTIA is supposed to be the agency that ensures fed spectrum policy is unified. While NTIA does represent the other agencies to FCC, it is not just a "dumb pipe." /2

— (((haroldfeld))) (@haroldfeld) January 28, 2022

John Leibovitz, a former deputy chief and special advisor at the FCC, weighed in with his own thread, explaining that the bungled process meant that the FCC couldn't use money to fix the problem. He explains how a tangle of responsibilities and roles and a lack of requirements for certain documentation made things cloudier for regulators.

3/ Would it have helped for aviation to have a pot of money -- conditioned on a strict timetable -- to upgrade altimeters? Probably. But the time to do this was before the rules were set, under existing authority. Afterward, the only authority that can move money is Congress.

— John Leibovitz (@JohnLeibovitz) January 28, 2022

Hopefully, the actual communication between industries and regulators means that a resolution is on the horizon, as this likely won't be the last we hear of the 5G / airline situation. It will be easier to make decisions when the carrier's deferments are set to expire in July because the FAA knows where AT&T and Verizon's towers actually are.

The January 28th statement from the FAA.

Through continued technical collaboration, the FAA, Verizon, and AT&T have agreed on steps that will enable more aircraft to safely use key airports while also enabling more towers to deploy 5G service. The FAA appreciates the strong communication and collaborative approach with wireless companies, which have provided more precise data about the exact location of wireless transmitters and supported more thorough analysis of how 5G C-band signals interact with sensitive aircraft instruments. The FAA used this data to determine that it is possible to safely and more precisely map the size and shape of the areas around airports where 5G signals are mitigated, shrinking the areas where wireless operators are deferring their antenna activations. This will enable the wireless providers to safely turn on more towers as they deploy new 5G service in major markets across the United States. The FAA continues to work with helicopter operators and others in the aviation community to ensure they can safely operate in areas of current and planned 5G deployment.