Agreement Clears C-Band for 5G; May End Monthslong Fight

Verizon and AT&T agreed to a further two-week delay, until Jan. 19, in turning on their C-band spectrum for 5G, while taking other actions to address air safety, consistent with the model for deployments in France. The agreement will protect air safety, President Joe Biden said in a statement. Industry observers said the carriers, government regulators and the airlines appear close to a final resolution, though questions remain.

Under the agreement, released Monday by the FAA and the Department of Transportation, AT&T and Verizon agreed to implement two sets of protections for airports on a priority list, including the latest proposed last weekend (see 2201030063). Both sides agreed to tackle helicopter radio altimeters “not addressed in the current mitigations.” Subject to “unforeseen aviation safety issues,” DOT and FAA said they “will not seek or demand any further delays of C-Band deployment, in whole or in part, including a delay of return to routine operations after the commitment period expires.”

“My Administration is committed to rapid 5G deployment, while minimizing disruptions to air operations and continuing to maintain the world’s safest airspace,” Biden said Tuesday. The agreement is “a significant step in the right direction, and we’re grateful to all parties for their cooperation and good faith,” he said: “This agreement ensures that there will be no disruptions to air operations over the next two weeks and puts us on track to substantially reduce disruptions to air operations when AT&T and Verizon launch.”

“We have decided to wait two weeks to activate our 5G network on the C-Band spectrum we acquired from the U.S. government,” Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said Tuesday in an email to employees. Vestberg said a pause is needed because the FAA still has unresolved questions. The agreement includes “temporary proactive protective measures, including reducing 5G power levels near airports and directing 5G nodes away from airports,” he said. Verizon also agreed last weekend to offer additional restrictions “conservatively mirroring the structure in France, which American carriers have hundreds of flights flying into every day,” he said.

The fight over the C band appears to be nearing an “end stage,” though “there are no guarantees that a solution will emerge in the next two weeks that has so far eluded the stakeholders,” New Street’s Blair Levin told investors. “No one is going to court -- at least not yet -- the FAA is not putting out new notices on flight restrictions, and the wireless carriers agreed to the two-week period in which all the stakeholders will work on final terms,” he said.

“We're pretty much done, except for the mopping up -- provided we don't have to go through this again in 2023 when the upper C-Band comes online,” emailed Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “The question remains whether FAA staff and FAA Administrator [Steve] Dickson have internalized that this is a collaborative process,” he said: “A big chunk of the problem has been game playing and passive-aggressive behavior on the part of FAA. Hopefully, we are now past that. Otherwise, we’ll be having the same fight next month.”

Biden’s statement “puts this almost to rest,” said Shane Tews, American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow: “We get to both fly and have 5G.”

Airlines For America, which threatened a lawsuit unless the government acted, supported the agreement. “We will continue to work with all stakeholders to help ensure that new 5G service can coexist with aviation safely,” said President Nicholas Calio.

The agreement “provides the framework and the certainty needed to achieve our shared goal of deploying 5G swiftly while ensuring air safety,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. Industry and regulators are “working together to share data, bring together technical experts, and collaborate in good faith to ensure the coexistence of wireless and aviation technologies,” she said.

“Something has gone terribly wrong when we must rely on corporations to do the right thing instead of the agencies that oversee them,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., tweeted Tuesday in response to the agreement. “More than ever, I’m laser-focused on making sure the use of the C-Band for 5G does not come at the cost of aviation safety.” The committee cited DeFazio’s “pressure” on the issue as one of the reasons AT&T and Verizon agreed to the delay.

DeFazio urged Rosenworcel Monday to “immediately delay” the C-band deployments until “the concerns expressed” by DOT, the FAA and “aviation industry stakeholders have been adequately addressed.” DeFazio countered FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s letter in opposition to further delay, saying Carr “fails to mention any of the restrictions or differences that exist” in other countries that allow commercial C-band use “but not in the U.S. In fact, in nearly every one of those 40 countries, the C-band signals used operate farther away from the radio frequency band used by radio altimeters; the C-band signals are at power levels significantly lower; there exists exclusion zones that limit or prevent 5G signals around airport runways; or there are limitations on the directional tilt of certain 5G broadband antennas.”