With growing frustration, the U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration has failed to get traction on its concerns about the potential
for harmful interference between newly activated 5G spectrum, at 3.7 – 3.98
GigaHertz, and mission critical aviation applications that use spectrum higher
up in the C-band. The squabble persists,
despite an FCC decision to create an additional 20 MegaHertz “Guard Band,” in addition to the already established 200 MHz of spectrum, that must
remain fallow, unavailable for use by any 5G wireless carrier, no matter how
far subscribers would be from an airport, or known flight paths. See https://www.fcc.gov/auction/107/factsheet.
Upset that neither the Executive
Branch, nor the FCC would consider the matter seriously, the FAA has played its
trump card: ordering aviators not to use existing flight management applications
that operate via C-band spectrum presumed by the FCC to be well protected from any
prospect for interference. Wireless
carriers have responded by offering to postpone for one month activation of the
expensive and now controversial spectrum.
See, e.g., https://www.reuters.com/technology/att-verizon-delay-c-band-spectrum-use-pending-air-safety-review-2021-11-04/.
At this point, few if anyone, can conclude
whether the FAA is falsely claiming the “sky is falling.” However, no one wants to end up on the wrong
side of an aviation disaster including the wireless carriers that have spent
over $85 billion in auctions for newly “refarmed” C-band spectrum.
Stakeholders forecast and speculate
the prospects for interference, often with a bias, one way or the other. For example, the lack of selectivity in cheap
GPS receivers and cellphone chipsets, provided grounds for John Deere and other
farming equipment manufacturers to oppose FCC efforts to abate an acute wireless
spectrum shortage by authorizing market entry by ventures such as Legado, that
proposed to use spectrum nearby, but also separated by an even larger Guard Band to protect GPS spectrum. See, e.g., https://www.fb.org/news/coalition-asks-lawmakers-to-intervene-in-gps-related-fcc-ruling.
This remarkable debate has the
potential to shave billions of dollars off the value of wireless carrier
shares, call into question the certainty of dedicated spectrum reallocations costing
billions of dollars, and perhaps even handicap the efficacy of U.S. wireless 5
and 6G initiatives at the International Telecommunication Union, the
intergovernmental spectrum planning forum.
High stakes indeed.
