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Recode Daily

The 5G airport freakout, explained

Recode Daily

Recode

Science, Technology, Society & Culture

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The FAA is worried about your cellphone again. Recode’s Rebecca Heilweil explains. Read Rebecca’s story: https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/1/12/22878622/5g-airplanes-c-band-interference-faa Today’s episode was produced by Victoria Dominguez , engineered by Paul Mounsey and hosted by Adam Clark Estes. Support Recode Daily by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:36.6

Rebecca Hyowile from Recode. So lately I've been hearing a lot about 5G. It's going to get a

0:42.4

lot faster and better, but it's also causing some problems for airlines. What's going on here?

0:47.9

So starting on January 19th Verizon and AT&T plan to switch on new frequencies that phones

0:55.7

that are built for 5G will be able to connect to. So these connections, it's called the C band,

1:02.0

are supposed to extend the range of 5G connections, but also make them a lot faster. So it'll

1:09.6

really be the first time your 5G phone will actually feel like a 5G phone. Which actually sounds

1:14.5

really great, especially since wireless carriers have been saying for years that 5G is the future,

1:19.1

but I have a 5G phone and honestly works a lot like my 4G phone. So why are airlines upset about

1:25.3

this? So this all gets back to the FAA, the main agency that regulates flying in the United States.

1:36.8

For a while, the FAA has been concerned about really particular piece of hardware called

1:42.2

radio altimeter. Basically these are devices that beam down signals from aircraft,

1:50.2

like when they're landing for instance, and help aircraft measure how high they are above

1:54.8

the ground. So this is really important if you're landing somewhere where you can't see so well,

1:59.3

through its really mountainous, it's really cloudy. These altimeters are really important for a lot

2:03.8

of the safety hardware that's built into airplanes. The concern is that these altimeters rely on

2:11.1

airwaves that sort of neighbor the airwaves that are used by C band and the FAA is really concerned

...

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