AT&T To Delay Some 5G Deployment

AT&T  said Tuesday it had voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways in a bid to address an aviation safety standoff, reports Reuters.

"We are frustrated by the FAA’s inability to do what nearly 40 countries have done, which is to safely deploy 5G technology without disrupting aviation services, and we urge it do so in a timely manner," AT&T said Tuesday. "We are launching our advanced 5G services everywhere else as planned with the temporary exception of this limited number of towers."

An AT&T spokeswoman said the wireless company agreed to temporarily defer the turning on of a limited number of towers around some airport runways but would launch 5G services “everywhere else as planned.” Verizon later Tuesday also committed to limit its 5G network around airports, adding that the new high-speed service will still cover more than 90 million Americans when it goes live Wednesday.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the cellphone carriers’ next-generation wireless upgrades have sat in limbo in recent months after the FAA asked them to pause their 5G rollouts. The aerospace regulator said the frequencies AT&T and Verizon planned to use to carry the new 5G signals might confuse radar altimeters, which aircraft depend on to measure height off the ground.

Telecom-industry executives have disputed those claims and said that the service in dispute, which covers a set of frequencies known as the C-band, already operates around similar airwaves in dozens of other countries.

Aviation-industry officials said without an agreement, they could face limits on flying certain aircraft types, including being effectively unable to use Boeing 777 jets that fly internationally. Boeing declined to comment.

The telecom and aviation industries seemed on the brink of a truce earlier this month after cellphone carriers agreed to completely pause the launch of their new 5G services until Jan. 19. The timeout was designed to give the FAA more time to whittle down its safety restrictions to specific aircraft and airports, which would lessen the disruption they caused to flight plans.

But the FAA in recent days informed airlines that many airports expected to get some relief from the safety restrictions would still face sharp limits on landings in harsh weather. Top passenger and cargo airline executives on Monday wrote Biden administration officials with another delay request, warning that the federal safety precautions could ground swaths of their fleets without more protection from 5G signals.

Daily Mail graphic 1/19/22

AT&T and Verizon said they still plan to launch their high-speed network links nationwide Wednesday but will refrain from turning on signals within 2 miles of airport runways.