Verizon and AT&T forced to delay 5G expansion once more

The failure of US aviation authorities to get their act together has ensured their battle of wills with the country’s biggest mobile operators carried over into 2022.

On New Year’s Eve the Federal Aviation Administration decided it needed the help of Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, to impose its will on Verizon and AT&T over the imminent launch of 5G on their C-band spectrum. While the band was auctioned a year ago, it wasn’t until the beginning of November that the FAA expressed concerns that telecoms using that band may interfere with airplane cockpit safety systems.

The operators were asked to delay the 5 December launch of 5G on C-band for a month, but that clearly wasn’t enough time for the FAA to get its act together. So just days before the new launch date it got Buttigieg to send a letter to them to delay it further. Having recovered from their hangovers, the CEOs of Verizon and AT&T initially declined the opportunity to voluntarily comply in a joint letter dated 2 January, the publication of which was outsourced to the WSJ, for some reason.

This apparently elicited much behind-the-scenes kerfuffle, resulting in the FAA yesterday publishing a short ‘statement on 5G’. “The FAA thanks AT&T and Verizon for agreeing to a voluntary delay and for their proposed mitigations,” it said. “We look forward to using the additional time and space to reduce flight disruptions associated with this 5G deployment.”

The use of the term ‘voluntary’ is a borderline piss-take at this stage, since the concession was clearly coerced. “At Secretary Buttigieg’s request, we have voluntarily agreed to one additional two-week delay of our deployment of C-Band 5G services,” said a statement emailed by AT&T to Cnet. The equivalent Verizon statement indicated it expects the delay to be absolutely the last. Let’s see.

The US operators are in a tight spot over this matter, with the threat of legal action from various aviation stakeholder groups adding to government pressure to delay its C-band rollout for as long as is necessary for the airplane safety issue to be resolved. While it’s absurd that they have been put in this position by incompetent government agencies, if they had ignored the pleas, gone ahead with the rollout and an aviation accident had happened, their liability would appear to be almost limitless.