The chief executives of AT&T (T.N) and Verizon Communications (VZ.N) rejected a request to delay the planned Jan. So their cautiousness is deeply ingrained as necessary for industry survival. Their existence depends on the perception of lack of danger despite otherwise high apparent risks (look at the safety record of gliding, when most glider pilots are professionals gliding for sport, as a contrast).
The reason the great unwashed public is willing to do something so seemingly crazy as get into what amounts to aluminum orange juice cans and fly at crazy heights is that the airlines have a phenomenal safety record. One reason the two sides are at odds is the airlines have vastly more stringent notions of safety than communications providers, and for good reasons. As we will again see, theoretically there is no interference, but as a saying attributed to Yogi Berra goes, “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. A group representing 10 airlines is having a hissy, having lost at the rulemaking phase, they are still trying to stop the 5G rollout until the safety of the 5G operation with respect to airline altimeters is concerned. The very short version is that Verizon and AT&T spent oodles buying 5G spectrum rights in early 2020, where despite (or as you will see, arguably because) rulemaking, the FCC imposed no meaningful restrictions on the carriers’ use of the rights they purchased.
This struggle is not only important in and of itself, but it illustrates a pathology that has become pervasive in America: money talks and the public be damned. The spat between the FAA and FCC over the about to begin 5G launch in the US just became front page business press news, although the battle heated up big time earlier in December.
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