assured Americans that most commercial aircraft are safe, and AT&T and Verizon have agreed to hold off on installing their new cellphone antennas near airports for six months.
But the problem has not been entirely resolved.Concerns began when the U.S. government auctioned part of the C-band spectrum to wireless carriers in 2021 for $81 billion.
The carriers are using C-band spectrum to provide 5G service at full speed, 10 times the speed of 4G networks.The C-band spectrum is close to the frequencies used by key electronics that aircraft rely on to land safely.
Here’s why that can be a problem. Wireless signals are carried by radio waves. The radio spectrum ranges from 3 hertz to 3,000 gigahertz and is part of the electromagnetic spectrum.