AT&T and Verizon Delay 5G Expansion to Address Aircraft Interference Concerns

[840quadra]

Cell phones interfering with flight control is a modern day myth - part of the security theater that happens on flights.

<snip>

Meaning you are worrying about nothing, and the airline regulations that insist on this nonsense are pretty bad at statistics / math.

It's all nothing until something happens.


Sure a smattering of 1 or 2 cell phones forgotten, or 1 or 2 people who are too self important to engage airplane mode will not fill a plane with a ton of RF interference. However, without such guidelines we would have flights full of people on calls, snapchat, streaming video, etc which would cause a totally different level of RF intermodulation.

 

[Dark_Omen]

5G is the biggest technology flop in recent memory.

 

[Joey2250]

I got an idea, lets wait until one month before the rollout to verify!

 

[Joey2250]

You can buy your iPhones unlocked & not tied to any service provider. You don’t get that discount, but you don’t get hassled later. That’s what I do when I buy.

Also those deals/discounts usually aren't really deals anyways. They add an extra fee to your bills monthly to get the cost of the phones back. Verizon used to up the line access fee to $40 vs a $20 fee for non-deal phones. They aren't eating the costs, you are paying for it now, or later.

 

[svish]

No issue in it being delayed. Aircraft safety is paramount.

 

[SactoGuy18]

I think T-Mobile US was smart to use the cellphone frequencies allocated to Sprint to get its mid-band 3GPP NR 5G working. That's why I've seen 850 mbps download speeds on my iPhone 12 if I'm close to the cellphone tower.

 

[skyhawkmatthew]

Cell phones interfering with flight control is a modern day myth - part of the security theater that happens on flights.

In my estimate at between 5% to 10% of people on any given flight will simply forget to turn off their phones.

That means on any flight ever there have been betwee 1 and 30 active cell phones - looking back into the past here!

The number of lights having crashed because of this: 0

According to Google, in the USA alone there's 25 million flights annually. So on all these millions of flights there will be some people forgetting to turn off their phones. And none of them have crashed because of a cell phone yet, since cell phones became popular 20 years ago. That's a LOT of data.

So you're talking about a statistical impossibility - airplane crashing from a cell phone is less likely than you walking down the road getting struck by lightning on a sunny day.

Meaning you are worrying about nothing, and the airline regulations that insist on this nonsense are pretty bad at statistics / math.

It is funny to note that, yes, it was only a few months before we got an ops bulletin warning us about the potential issues with 5G frequencies and the radio altimeters that our operations manual was finally updated to remove the requirement that the captain remind passengers to switch off their devices prior to us commencing a low-visibility approach.

 

[DblHelix]

Boo. I guarantee this is unfounded. Tired of my **** coverage and speed from Verizon.

 

[LawJolla]

You would think that, but on an instrument training flight with myself (250+ hour pilot) and a CFI (several thousand hours) following a victor airway the old fashioned way via VOR (I know, just use the GPS and fly direct) got a call from Boston Center that we were a couple of degrees off course. We checked everything and there were no setup mistakes. We realized that our cellphones were on when one of them rang. This was back in the 3G or maybe even 2G days, but we turned the phones off and magically we didn’t get any more helpful reminders from center. The phones were in our flight bags in the back seat, which was probably right over the VOR antennas. So phones can interfere (at least they could at one time). So for us poor GA folk who don’t have ultra-modern radio altimeters, we could have incorrect ILS readings and have an unpleasant surprise when we break out at minimums and see the runway is either not directly in front of us or worse, we are below glide path.

Interesting with back seat phones...

In a Cessna, I had my radios go out with an intermittent thumping. After a panicked scramble I noticed the sound reminded me of placing my cell phone on a radio alarm clock.

I turned the phone off and the radios came back.

Like you, I had flown with my cell phone in the same place for hundreds of hours without incident.

I haven't heard any issues with VORs and cell phones though. And just given how VOR radios work, I'm not sure how you could track a radial and then interference freezes the needle. But glad you got out of it without a phone number to call!

 

[Stunning_Sense4712]

Safety comes first! That's Priority #1

My biggest issue is the incompetence from the both the FAA and FCC. Since this testing should have been done and any filters needed to correct any discovered issues should have been addressed before December 5.

 

[Stunning_Sense4712]

As a pilot, the "phones off" was always silly. (I heard it was really the phone companies pressuring the FAA because the phones quickly switching towers wrecked havoc on their infrastructure)

But the radio altimeter could be a thing. Radio altimeters are crucial for low visibility / "auto land" functionality, and we need to be 100% sure that a 5G tower + phones on final approach doesn't change the altimeter's readings.

Once again this testing and any needed fixes should have been done before December 5.

 

[Stunning_Sense4712]

Nope, but the FAA wants to be 200% sure…

The FAA is incompetent. This whole issue proves this since they are now playing catchup like they had no idea that C Band was going to be activated on December 5.

 

[jzuena]

Interesting with back seat phones...

In a Cessna, I had my radios go out with an intermittent thumping. After a panicked scramble I noticed the sound reminded me of placing my cell phone on a radio alarm clock.

I turned the phone off and the radios came back.

Like you, I had flown with my cell phone in the same place for hundreds of hours without incident.

I haven't heard any issues with VORs and cell phones though. And just given how VOR radios work, I'm not sure how you could track a radial and then interference freezes the needle. But glad you got out of it without a phone number to call!

Now that you mention it, I’ve had radio issues when flying a helicopter just outside the Pilgrim nuclear power plant’s restricted zone. I wonder if that was cellphone related as well. I had learned to turn mine off by then, but my passenger (who is also a pilot) might have left his on. Didn’t want any F-16s coming in thinking we were terrorists, so we headed away from the plant and squawked NORDO and headed back to the airport. Radio came back as we were getting near the airport.

 

[crisss1205]

Verizon sucks balls and service sucks in LI NY

I have great coverage on Long Island. I regularly get speeds over 150 Mbps.

 

[crisss1205]

As I understand it, one major difference is that the C-band signal coming from a satellite dish 22,000 Miles above the earth is extremely weak by the time it gets to your satellite dish, whereas C-band signals from a terrestrial tower would be far stronger.

Transmit power plays a role into it. However, frequency is still frequency. They don’t operate on the same frequencies as the FAA equipment.

 

[cbaca51]

I turned off 5G as soon as I received my 13PM on launch day. Waste of battery

 

[Albatrossflyer]

The FCC told the FAA to f*$k off during the comment period before awarding the 5G spectrum, contradicting multiple aviation industry experts who warned of a potential problem.

Not only do the flight crew see the RAD ALT indication on cockpit displays, but more importantly the autopilot switches gains in the ILS control loop starting at 2500' based on RAD ALT.

Collins is now offering a 5G compatible RAD ALT unit but they aren't cheap, and aircraft operators shouldn't have to foot the bill for the FCC's arrogance.

 

[Breaking Good]

Even if we buy it [an iPhone 13] outright, it takes 60 days to get it unlocked, and of course we lose the $800.00 trade-in deal. Thank you ATT for nothing!

These days all the carriers only sell locked phones. Unlock policies are typically 50 to 60 days on the service. For prepaid services, however, it can be up to six months.

 

[dampfnudel]

Safety comes first! That's Priority #1

Safety doesn’t always come first, sometimes, maybe more frequently than it should, it takes blood, tears and law$uits to make it happen.

 

[AdamNC]

I have been telling you guys for 3 years now 5G is a bunch of BS. My friend who works for Crown Castle as the mid Atlantic planing and service layout director said last week it would be 2025-2027 before all the towers for regular 5G was fully installed and running as designed. New regulations by Biden have slowed things down considerably. MWave in large cities even DC, NYC, Philly not until 2026-2029 at the earliest. 5G and all available channels may take into the mid 2030’s to truly be 100% up and running. It was supposed to be mid 2025.

 

[RONS67]

Game point to T-Mobile which apparently does not need to worry about this band?

Two game points to Verizon and AT&T for vastly higher speeds except near airports.

 

[canyonblue737]

well Verizon just turned it on... I'm in the suburbs nowhere near a tower / airport / etc. and suddenly my iPhone says 5G UW even indoors and I'm getting 270-300 down (vs. 75-125 before with "5G"). When I am in a major city very near the previous UW antennas I would get 1000+ down but that was so limited as to be nothing other than a tech demo.

5G got real. Hopefully the airports that still have limits (and there are some) will be very limited because we can't use our heads up display at work landing the jet for those anymore and I'm a "HUD cripple" I like my HUD lol. Maybe the First Officer should do the landings at those places lol...

 

[SactoGuy18]

The nice thing about T-Mobile's mid-band 5G is that they essentially turned the former Sprint frequencies (no threat to airplane C-band transponders!) to use higher capacity 5G. As such, I've seen as high as 850 mbps download speeds if I'm near a known T-Mobile tower.

By the way, I wonder why airliners don't use assisted GPS for automatic landings? Assisted GPS has an accuracy of around 3 meters (just under 10 feet), more than enough for blind landings.

 

[SFjohn]

well Verizon just turned it on... I'm in the suburbs nowhere near a tower / airport / etc. and suddenly my iPhone says 5G UW even indoors and I'm getting 270-300 down (vs. 75-125 before with "5G"). When I am in a major city very near the previous UW antennas I would get 1000+ down but that was so limited as to be nothing other than a tech demo.

5G got real. Hopefully the airports that still have limits (and there are some) will be very limited because we can't use our heads up display at work landing the jet for those anymore and I'm a "HUD cripple" I like my HUD lol. Maybe the First Officer should do the landings at those places lol...

That’s crazy, if you’re a pilot and have a HUD you should be able to use it. It’s a damned important safety feature.

 

[canyonblue737]

That’s crazy, if you’re a pilot and have a HUD you should be able to use it. It’s a damned important safety feature.

at the airports affected (and there will remain many) the HUD has to be stowed by 1000 ft above the ground so you can't use it. not a big deal but its nice, even in great weather conditions. i'm sure they will work it all out soon.