Yesterday, reports surfaced that Verizon Wireless was spending upwards of $27 million to relocate 4G cellsites in airports order to address interference inbetween air traffic control and planes.
“Verizon 4G Antenna’s near or on any airport must be removed due to the fact that they are disrupting the communication from the Cockpit to the ATC ( Air Traffic Control) Towers on the airport. This is rumored to be a 27 Million Dollar job to move/rebuild all towers near many airports. The 4G Tower at Chicago O’Hare has been taken down recently. Verizon is trying to move the days of their 4G phone launch to have time to move/rebuild all of the towers by the end of February”
After confirming with rep Jeffery Nelson, the claims made above by an anonymous tipster have been proven false. All cellsites are confirmed operational and operating within the strict guidelines set forth for deployment within airports.
As the radio link between air traffic control and planes is between the 118-137Mhz range with the LTE band at 700MHz, any issues with interference would have appeared before and at the beginning of the LTE network rollout in airports and not two months later, making the claims even less credible.
Lightsquared interfering with GPS in airplanes is what’s been in the news…. see next article.