distance on a phone on an actual phone line, 5g is how we live our lives, right? we re streaming, using social media, the holograms at basketball games. this is the future. you re a pilot. how does this technology affect airplanes? yeah, you know, i want 5g, too, but it s important to know that this part of the 5g frequency band, the c-band right next door to the part of the spectrum used by a crucial device on airliners, the radar altimeter, it s designed to tell an aircraft how close it is to the ground when it s getting really close to the ground in really bad weather in particular. you need a couple of radar altimeters operating well on that proverbial dark and stormy night when you re flying in to land. and if it doesn t operate well, truly catastrophic things can happen. so, while it may be not a likely scenario, the airline industry is looking at a problem which
the 5g frequency band, the c-band which these 5g bands operate in. the radar altimeter is an extremely important device. it is used by pilots to get precise data on the relative height of the aircraft to the ground as it gets closer to the ground. particularly crucial in the midst of a low visibility or zero visibility landi ing scenao so, if the radar altimeter is not operating well, you have a problem. now, the c-band 5g is supposed to be next door with a buffer zone from this band of frequency, but frequencies have a way of getting out of their lane so, it s important you have specific filters on the device, the altimeters, to block out any stray frequencies. and the problem is, the altimeters that are in the fleet, not all of them have been checked out and the cellular