House Transportation Members Fault Interagency Coordination on C-Band
House Transportation Committee members and witnesses at a Thursday Aviation Subcommittee hearing criticized breakdowns in the federal interagency spectrum coordination process as a primary cause of the C-band aviation safety fracas that preceded delays last month in AT&T and Verizon rolling out commercial 5G use on the frequency (see 2201180065). FAA Administrator Steve Dickson told lawmakers he believes “we are in a much better place than we were” in mid-January, before the wireless carriers and the agency reached agreement to temporarily defer turning on C-band 5G service around some airports. Lawmakers wondered if the situation will deteriorate again when cellular carriers lift those temporary restrictions.
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Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., called the interagency process “completely broken,” as evidenced by the “disorienting display of 5G fits and starts over the last several months, inevitably due to the FCC auctioning off 5G spectrum without any concrete plan in place to safely deploy.” The FCC’s “history of subordinating transportation safety to corporate broadband interests has predictably resulted in the current mess we find ourselves in and must change if we hope to avoid a similar result in the future,” he said.
DeFazio told us he doesn’t “at this point feel the need to bring” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in to testify before House Transportation on the C-band controversy, after speaking with her at a Wednesday meeting (see 2202020058) with him and Aviation Chairman Rick Larsen, D-Wash. Rosenworcel was invited to testify at the hearing but cited a scheduling conflict. She “had a productive discussion with both of them yesterday, including on how to build on the progress to date so that 5G networks and aviation technologies can safely coexist in” the U.S., a spokesperson emailed.
Based on that meeting it’s clear Rosenworcel has “a bit of a telecom bias, but she admitted that the process had been totally faulty and wanted to fix it going forward,” DeFazio said. “She has a very different view of these things than” ex-FCC Chairman Ajit Pai “and she’s talking about writing new memorandums of understanding with agencies that could be impacted” by FCC spectrum decisions. Aviation ranking member Garret Graves, R-La., criticized Rosenworcel for not prioritizing the hearing and asked DeFazio to include Republican Transportation leaders in future meetings with her.
DeFazio cautioned he doesn't oppose 5G deployment, but “let’s not suggest the risks of delaying 5G deployment were ever equal to the risks deployment could pose to aviation safety.” A “dropped call or the inability to access a slightly faster internet connection is not nearly the same as the risk of a potential aviation accident,” he said. “In fact, it’s not even close.”
“I think everyone realizes the process didn’t serve anyone well,” Dickson told lawmakers. “It did not serve the aviation community well, certainly the FAA, and it also did not serve the telecommunications industry well. And we certainly need to do better as a country."
The FAA had raised concerns as far back as the 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference about the risk 5G use of C-band spectrum posed to aviation safety, Dickson said. It took more than a year for FAA to get information the agency sought to help assess 5G’s impacts. "As it turns out, the FCC didn't even have the data that we needed," he said. "We discovered that when we started to work directly with the telecommunications companies. They never had to provide this to the government."
Larsen, former FCC Technological Advisory Committee Chairman Dennis Roberson and others blamed NTIA for not adequately informing the FCC of FAA C-band concerns. “It’s pretty clear there was a big breakdown” at NTIA, Larsen said. Rep. Kai Kahele, D-Hawaii, suggested former President Donald Trump’s failure to nominate a permanent NTIA administrator caused process failures. Administrator Alan Davidson, NTIA's first permanent head since Redl, took office last month (see 2201210083). The agency didn’t comment.
“There’s no excuse for us to be in this situation,” Graves said. There’s “a lot of frustration” among Transportation members in both parties “with how we found ourselves” in the fracas. Agencies were playing “chicken with one another, or whatever ridiculousness happened, and now we ended up threatening aviation safety,” he said: “The first step” should include “fundamental changes” in how the FAA and FCC work with one another, as the two agencies have “very different missions” when it comes to handling spectrum policy.
Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., placed some blame with FAA. Last-minute directives to airports on the C-band’s aviation safety implications show “that you really didn't have a plan and didn't understand the gravity of the situation ahead of” time. “How the hell did we get to the point where we had so much brinkmanship going on with this?,” he said.
“We share your frustration,” said CTIA President Meredith Baker. “We followed” FCC C-band rules and “I don’t understand” how FAA concerns weren’t resolved before the commission’s auction of spectrum on the frequency. She’s hopeful Rosenworcel and Davidson will “have an opportunity now to take a fresh look at what is working and what is not” in the interagency process. The FCC “conducted a rigorous analysis and found no harmful interference” from 5G use of C-band spectrum, Baker said: She believes the wireless and aviation sectors are now "in the right spot" and the steady clearance of some altimeters shows "coexistence" of 5G and aviation is possible.
Aviation witnesses criticized the situation. "Both of our industries have been thrust into this avoidable economic calamity by a government process that failed," said Airlines for America President Nicholas Calio. “This is no way to run a railroad, and it’s certainly no way to operate the world’s safest air transportation system," said Air Line Pilots Association President Joe DePete. He expects current restrictions and workarounds "will be needed for the foreseeable future."