The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has reassured that 5G is safe for aircraft operations in India. There has been a lot of confusion in people’s minds related to 5G being a safe technology or not. The concerns for the aviation sector came up primarily because of what’s happening in the United States. Air India had even cancelled some of its flights to the United States (U.S.) on Wednesday due to the same. The U.S. telecom operators had started their C-band 5G services due to which airline operations were getting affected. TRAI Chairman, P D Vaghela told TOI, that there are no problems for the aviation industry in India when it comes to the 5G rollout.
Plenty of Spectrum Safeguard Available
Vaghela said that there is plenty of safeguard between the spectrum that will be used by the telcos for 5G and the airwaves that aircraft equipment use. The same is not the case in the U.S. and thus the problems have occurred. The major issue is with the airwaves that the altimeter uses which is in the 4200 MHz - 4400 MHz. In India, the telcos will be given 5G airwaves in the 3300 MHz to 3670 MHz. Thus, there will be a gap of 530 MHz between the frequencies that telcos will use and the airwaves that aircraft will use. But in the U.S., telcos have been assigned airwaves between 3700 MHz - 3980 MHz. Thus, the gap between the frequencies for both services (aviation and telecom) is much less in the U.S. An altimeter is a piece of sensitive aircraft equipment that helps the pilots with landing when the visibility on the runway is very less. Thus, it is important that there is no interference with the altimeter as it is a very crucial equipment of the aircraft determining a safe landing. But India has nothing to worry about here because of the spectrum safeguard that is present in between.
