Meteorologists Worry 5G Could Interfere with Weather Satellites

The era of 5G could offer massively increased data speeds, more real-time services, and the proliferation of “internet of things” hardware. According to several groups representing meteorologists, 5G could also mean major disruptions to weather forecasting. They’ve submitted an official complaint to the Federal Communications Commission asking that certain 5G deployments be delayed in order to study the issue.

5G is the successor to 4G LTE, but it’s not intended to be a full replacement. Many of the features tied to LTE right now like phone calls and location assistance will remain with LTE. 5G is intended as a conduit for hyper-fast data speeds with low latency and higher network capacity. That last point is key as 4G networks often get bogged down when there are too many concurrent devices connected.

Carriers like Verizon and AT&T have already started deploying 5G networks with millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum, but these aren’t the ones meteorologists cite as a problem. Representatives from the American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, and the National Weather Association say that a chunk of L-band spectrum licensed to Ligado Networks could interfere with weather satellite operations.

Ligado Networks has a massive 40 MHz block of spectrum covering 1500 MHz to 1700 MHz. Millimeter wave frequencies are more than 10 times higher, so they carry more data, but Ligado’s network would have greater reach. The company wants to use its frequencies to create custom private networks for the internet of things, but one of its frequency blocks (1,675 to 1,680 MHz) is adjacent to vital weather satellite frequencies.

This isn’t a new fight for Ligado Networks. The company was previously known as LightSquared when it tried to use the same spectrum to set up an LTE network. However, concerns about interference delayed its plans and led to a bankruptcy filing. Ligado Networks insists that its system won’t cause interference issues with weather satellites, but meteorologists claim that any concentration of these 5G signals around meteorological sites could affect reliability.

Meteorologists point to slower weather reporting as a real danger, saying it’s simply not worth the risk. Ligado Networks with backing from the GSMA says there’s no reason these signals cannot coexist. It’s now up to the FCC to decide if Ligado Networks will have to wait and conduct more testing.