Jeff McElfresh, AT&T Communications CEO, said he is confident the carrier will work through the issues regarding possible interference from C-band operations with airline radar altimeters, during the Wells Fargo Technology Media and Telecom Summit held this week. Inside Towers reported the offer by AT&T and Verizon to transmit at lower power around airports for six months to give the FAA more time to figure out a fix for potential interference from 5G operations to aircraft radio altimeters.
Calling the guard band “massive” between the wireless spectrum and the airline radar altimeter frequencies, McElfresh noted that AT&T has coexisted before by modifying power levels and antenna tilts and suggested that it would not have a major impact on the radiated signal strength nationwide on the carrier’s C-band spectrum.
“I think it’s been somewhat overblown in terms of the impact. If I look at the investment thesis for C-band and I look at a broad-top coverage map, really, it’s a very single-digit percentage, if not less, of the number of cell sites and POPs covered that we’ve got to make these modifications to, which are really in and around airports or helipads or final approach slopes where aircraft are landing,” he said.
AT&T is not pausing its buildout. It continues apace, hanging antennas and pre-positioning radios in the C-band, according to McElfresh.
McElfresh also expressed confidence that the carrier will hit its long-term goal of running fiber by 30 million homes by 2025, despite the current supply chain problems that slowed 2021’s rollout. “As we embarked upon a fiber investment, we established very durable and large purchase agreements for fiber and chipsets associated with this multiyear build,” he said. “So, from a supply chain perspective, I feel pretty good that we’ve got enough weight in the industry and enough partnerships with our vendors and suppliers to work through any month or 60-day delay or sluggishness in the supply chain.”
The reported delay may have been more complicated than a mere fiber optic shortage. Because AT&T didn’t get started engineering and planning until late last year, according to McElfresh, the carrier knew that deployment would be concentrated in the back half of 2021. “Our goal was to exit this year at a rate and pace to give us high confidence that we could achieve a steady level expansion over the next several years to achieve the 30 million,” he said.
By J. Sharpe Smith Inside Towers Technology Editor
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