- Is 5G making airports unsafe?
Is the plane you're on going to crash land?
There are a lot of baseless conspiracy theories about 5G.
This is not one of them.
- This has to do with radio altimeters.
According to the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration,
"The radio altimeter is an important aircraft instrument
"and its intended function is to provide
"direct height-above-terrain/water information
"to a variety of aircraft systems."
I would imagine, I'm not a pilot,
but knowing how far you are off the ground is important.
- Yes.
- One of those things.
What systems could be affected by it,
class A terrain awareness warning systems,
enhanced ground proximity warning systems,
traffic alert and collision avoidance systems,
takeoff guidance, flight control.
- I mean, this tool ultimately is super important for pilots
when they're trying to land planes in bad weather.
- And this document then goes on to say
that a wide range of other automated systems
also rely on this data that could be affected.
And it could happen "during any phase of flight
"most critically during takeoff,
"approach and landing phases,"
which are obviously important parts
of the plane flying process.
So is this something to be concerned about?
Yes.
- 5G comes into play because Verizon and AT&T
are trying to deploy C-band 5G at airports
and the C-band 5G bands are very close
to the same bands the altimeters use.
- The United States frequency allocation chart
is a colorful amalgamation of every single band
in this frequency landscape that we have.
This is a map from 2016 and if I zoom in down here,
this part hasn't changed.
Aeronautical radio navigation,
between 4.2 gigahertz and 4.4 gigahertz.
This whole fixed satellite fixed area over here
has now been sold to Verizon and AT&T.
There's a buffer zone between four and 4.2
that was supposed to prevent interference,
but it became obvious very quickly
that this little buffer zone
was not actually gonna be enough
to not interfere with the radio altimeters.
- So right, the bands that AT&T and Verizon got
are 3.7 to 3.98.
So we're getting really close to the same bands
those altimeters use, and that's why there's this issue.
- Although this is all just coming to light
in terms of the news cycle,
the government has been looking into this for a while.
So I decided to find out,
is there actual data behind this concern
or is it just sort of a theoretical possibility.
Something could go wrong,
but why are we making a big deal out of it,
like maybe some of the carriers have said.
I found this riveting 231-page document
that talks about the actual tests that had been done.
This chart stood out to me.
The testing we're talking about is the interference
from C-band 5G, as it interferes
with the radio altimeters on planes,
which are very sensitive.
On this graph, you can see that the black line
is where it needs to be, and then there's a safety margin,
which is the red shaded area.
And in urban areas,
as planes basically get closer to the airport,
the interference is greater than the tolerance
of the radio altimeter, and that's why we're seeing
these lists of airports that have buffer zones.
And they're all in these urban areas
because of this type of research,
where they noticed that in urban areas,
the planes just aren't able to maintain
a strong enough connection to the ground
because of all the other C-band interference.
- Now, the carriers are saying
this shouldn't be an issue at all because over in Europe
went off without a hitch.
However, that's a little bit dishonest
or maybe more than just a little bit dishonest.
So in Europe, the C-band 5G bands they're using
are 3.4 to 3.8, as opposed to the US 3.7 to 3.98.
So the bands are lower and that's why
there have been fewer issues in Europe.
- Farther away, exactly.
And actually France tried to do the 200 megahertz buffer
and they realized that it wasn't enough,
so they had to retroactively go back and add more buffer.
The chart I just showed you has to do
with commercial airliners,
but as soon as we start to look at business jets,
for instance, or usage category two,
it needs to be at the black line.
And then there's this buffer zone, safety zone,
but you'll notice that all of these lines up here
are way above where it needs to be.
And that means that almost none of the smaller aircraft
that don't have these really robust
Boeing-level radio altimeters,
like are totally not gonna work
in low visibility conditions.
On the FAA's website, their 5G and aviation safety page,
currently 90% of the US commercial fleet
is supposed to be okay to go.
- We should also say 10% is still a lot.
- 10% is still a lot, exactly.
But although it says that all Boeing 777s, for instance,
are clear to go, January 25th,
the FAA issued an airworthiness directive,
prohibiting 747s and 777 from landing at airports
where 5G interference could occur.
- To me, it sounds like this just wasn't
very well thought out to begin with.
There was a quote from the Emirates president
that I want to read.
"We were not aware that the power of the antennas
"in the United States has been doubled
"compared to what's going on elsewhere.
"We were not aware that the antennas themselves
"had been put into a vertical position
"rather than a slightly slanting position."
So it sounds like they just stuck up these towers
however they felt like doing without any thoughts
about what the potential consequences might be.
- For the longest time as you saw in that 2016 chart,
radio altimeters had their own little piece of real estate
and there weren't many neighbors, but then all of a sudden,
the government sold the land to AT&T and Verizon,
and they came in and they're making a lot of noise.
They're like, we got plans for this,
but the altimeters who have been here for the longest time,
they've actually sort of been spreading out
into other people's lands.
They're not as good as they should be.
- One of the reasons why AT&T and Verizon
are really pushing for C-band,
and they don't really want to wait on this
is 'cause they're trying to catch up with T-Mobile
who is by far the leader in 5G.
AT&T and Verizon just spent tens of billions of dollars
acquiring the C-band and they want to implement it quickly
because they need to catch up the T-Mobile
who really isn't going to be pushing C-band
until late 2023.
So there's a big monetary incentive for Verizon and AT&T
to get this out as quickly as possible.
So what's the solution?
I want to read this quote from Nicholas Calio
the president and CEO of Airlines for America.
"The fix is basically working out where the bandwidth is,
"the amount of power used, the tilt of the antennas,
"the placement of the antennas.
"There are mitigations can be put in place.
"It's just going to take time to do it.
"The fix can be almost immediate tower by tower."
Why didn't they let us do this to begin with?
- It's an immediate solution if you take
every one of the thousands of towers, one by one.
That's not very immediate.
- Immediate for each individual.
- For each individual tower.
The government knew about this for many, many years.
They sold off the spectrum.
C-band 5G is built for airports.
I mean, it's a perfect use case for this technology
where it's not like people packed in like a stadium,
which is the high band 5G,
and it's not the crappy, T-Mobile rural, low-band 5G.
It's built for a bunch of people all in the same place.
Don't have to rely on public wifi.
- Yeah, airport wifi is especially bad.
- It is, it's awful and you gotta pay for it sometimes.
Don't even get us started on airport wifi.
And then the government says, no, you can't do this
because, oh, by the way, the planes might crash.
And the reason I tend to think that it actually is an issue
aside from the fact that there's scientific data,
is that there's really no reason for the airlines
to shut this down.
They don't really have a monetary incentive that I can see.
- The airports would benefit from having that C-band 5G.
People would not have to rely on that wifi as much.
- It's gonna make their lives easier
if people could get distracted by their phones
and not have to worry about airport wifi problems.
- We're gonna leave a link in the description section below
with list of the airports currently being
impacted by this 5G debacle.
And please join this channel.
- Right, join our friends, our family, our Davids.
I love explaining this type of thing to people
and looking into the data behind it.
If you don't love looking into the data, as much as I do,
you might want to consider joining this channel.
It really helps us out a lot.
We appreciate it.
And I have an idea for a solution, I think, to this problem.
It's instead of only relying on these radio altimeters,
people could just turn on their phones
and tell the pilot if the signal is really good,
because if they have a really strong signal,
it means that they're getting close to the ground.
So like, Hey, I just got good service.
Pull up.
- Or build a time machine, go back in time
and plan this stuff out ahead of time.
- Roads, where we're going, we don't need roads.
- Either one of those solutions are equally viable.
- Equally viable, equally realistic.
Yeah, thanks for watching.