(New York) The US aviation authority, the FAA, announced on Friday that it has authorized wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon to deploy additional 5G antennas around airports, with some restrictions remaining in place to ensure landing safety.
Posted at 1:34 p.m.
The FAA feared interference between the new high-speed internet frequencies and those used by instruments important to aircraft safety, altimeters. The operators had agreed in mid-January to start deploying their 5G network by postponing the activation of the towers installed near certain airports.
“Through ongoing technical collaboration, the FAA, Verizon, and AT&T have agreed on measures that will allow more aircraft to safely use major airports while activating more antennas for their 5G network,” the FAA said in a statement.
The agency had already indicated the day before having authorized approximately 90% of the fleet of American planes to land in most cases.
Information provided by operators on the exact location of antennas and new analyzes on the interactions between 5G signals and altimeters have further narrowed down potential problem areas, the FAA said on Friday.
Constraints still remain in place for some aircraft models and some airport runways in the event of low visibility.
The federations representing the mobile telephony (CTIA) and aviation (A4A) sectors in the United States welcomed this progress.
A4A noted, however, that there was “still a lot of work to do” to minimize disruption to air traffic as 5G towers are rolled out.
The biggest companies have reported in recent days that concessions made by operators have avoided massive flight cancellations, but that small disruptions are still to be expected.
The boss of JetBlue thus indicated on Thursday that he was facing restrictions at certain airports for the Embraer 190s in his fleet. “It’s fortunately a very small percentage of thefts, but it does exist,” he said on a conference call.
The association representing regional airlines in the United States also pointed out that its members were more affected than the major airlines.