It will take at least a year to have a permanent 5G solution near US airports.

Problems related to 5G antennas around airports are being resolved progressively, but it will take at least a year to finally resolve the situation, said the United States civil aviation authority, the FAA.

The agency feared interference between the new ultrafast internet frequencies and those used by the important instruments for flight safety, radio altimeters, in case of poor visibility.

Mobile phone operators Verizon and AT&T agreed in mid-January to delay the activation of 5G towers installed near some airports, thus avoiding a massive disruption to air traffic.

The vast majority of commercial aircraft are now cleared to land in most cases, but there are still problems with some aircraft.

The FAA”is developing new regulations” for radio altimeters and “it is possible that some current radio altimeters” do not comply, said the entity’s administrator, Steve Dickson, during a hearing in the US Congress. Then they will need to be replaced.

Dickson also said that the agency was conducting tests to see if the deployment of 5G antennas did not pose particular problems with mobile phones that were not in “airplane mode” during flights.

Questioned about the fact that the FAA has taken so long before requesting measures to avoid security problems with the deployment of 5G frequencies at the end of 2021, Dickson acknowledged that the coordination process between the different actors “had not served anyone”.

One of the main reasons, according to him, is that telecommunications companies have been slow to share information with the FAA that they had never shared before.