5G Telecoms – a threat to Airline Safety

5G Telecoms – a threat to Airline Safety

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – The chief executives of major US passenger and cargo airlines have warned of a “catastrophic” aviation crisis this week as AT&T and Verizon deploy new 5G services.

Concept –

• The United States auctioned mid-range 5G bandwidth to mobile phone companies in early 2021 in the 7-3.98 GHz range on the spectrum known as C band, for about $80 billion.
• The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has warned that the new 5G technology could interfere with instruments such as altimeters, which measure how far above the ground an airplane is travelling.
• Altimeters operate in the 4.2-4.4 GHz range and the concern is that the auctioned frequencies sit too close to this range.
• In addition to altitude, altimeter readouts are also used to facilitate automated landings and to help detect dangerous currents called wind shear.

What difference does the frequency make?

• The higher the frequency in the spectrum, the faster the service. So in order to get full value from 5G, operators want to operate at higher frequencies.
• Some of the C band spectrum auctioned had been used for satellite radio but the transition to 5G means there will be much more traffic.

To know more about it, please refer December 2021 DPN.