OTTAWA – Innovation Canada said last week it will create exclusion zones around nine more airports preventing 5G wireless signals from interfering with aircraft.
The request was made by Transport Canada, which was concerned about the impact of the wireless signals from the 3500 MHz and 3800 MHz spectrum bands – key midband spectrum used for 5G.
The additional airports are Victoria, Kelowna, and Comox in British Columbia; Whitehorse in Northwest Territories; North Bay in Ontario; Sydney in Nova Scotia; and Deer Lake, Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Stephenville in Newfoundland and Labrador.
That brings the total number of airports with 5G exclusion zones to 35, which represent 93 per cent of passenger traffic in the country. ISED said that’s similar to the passenger coverage of the protected airports in the United States.
The new exclusion zones will apply until January 1, 2026.
Back in November 2021, the department approved the exclusion zones for 26 major airports after a study found possible interference with the aircraft’s radio altimeters that help them land at airports.
The large telecoms had complained that when the department auctioned the spectrum, it did not indicate it would create these zones. ISED responded by saying that the telecoms would still be able to provide a “range of services and deployments, such as indoor networks for clients, serving verticals in indoor industrial areas around airports, and providing covering inside airport terminals.”
It added that most airport foot traffic occurs inside “where most high-speed data use would occur.”
Photo via Wikicommons
