• January 12, 2023

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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed on January 9 that all passenger and cargo aircraft will be required to have 5G-safe equipment by February 2024. This equipment would include 5G C-band tolerant radio altimeters or an approved radio frequency (RF) filter. The requirement could potentially end a dispute between the aviation and wireless industries, which has prevented AT&T and Verizon from fully deploying 5G on the C-Band spectrum licenses the wireless carriers purchased.

“Some radio altimeters may already demonstrate tolerance to the 5G C-Band emissions without modification,” the FAA said. “Some may need to install filters between the radio altimeter and antenna to increase a radio altimeter’s tolerance. For others, the addition of a filter will not be sufficient to address interference susceptibility; therefore, the radio altimeter will need to be replaced with an upgraded radio altimeter.”

Looking at the 7,993 airplanes on the U.S. registry, approximately 180 of them would need radio altimeter replacement and 820 airplanes would need radio altimeter filters to be added to comply with the proposed modification requirement. The total estimated cost of this compliance is approximately $26 million.

The FAA will be open for public comments on its new proposal for 30 days before finalizing it.

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Sources:

fiercewireless.com/5g/faa-require-airplanes-upgrade-altimeters-early-2024

cnet.com/tech/mobile/faa-wants-us-airplanes-to-be-5g-safe-by-2024/

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/faa-proposes-feb-2024-deadline-for-airplane-altimeters-to-filter-out-5g-signals/