The chief executives of AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. today rejected a plea by U.S. regulators to delay the rollout of new 5G wireless services scheduled to launch this week, despite concerns over potential interference with aviation technology.

In a joint letter, AT&T CEO John Stankey and Verizon boss Hans Vestberg escalated a dispute between their firms and regulators over aviation industry fears that the new 5G services could interfere with the sensitive electronics of aircraft during flight takeoffs and landings.

The new 5G services were originally set to launch in December, but the launch was postponed after the companies agreed to one-month delay while safety reviews took place.

Today Stankey and Vestberg proposed launching some 5G services this week with the adoption of “exclusion zones” around airports for the next six months, similar to what is already done in France.

“The laws of physics are the same in the United States and France,” the executives wrote, adding that the companies together have spent more than $80 billion to purchase 5G spectrum from the government and billions more for the associated rollout.

The proposal to adopt exclusion zones came as the companies rejected a call by the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration to delay their planned Jan. 5 launch by two more weeks.

“Failure to reach a solution by January 5 will force the U.S. aviation sector to take steps to protect the safety of the travelling public,” U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and FAA administrator Steve Dickson wrote on Dec. 31. Such steps “will result in widespread and unacceptable disruption as airplanes divert to other cities or flights are canceled.”

The FAA said in a statement today that it would review the latest proposal from the telecom firms, adding that “U.S. aviation safety standards will guide our next actions.”

Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA AFL-CIO union, said in a tweet Sunday that AT&T’s and Verizon’s new proposal “demonstrates the parties are not operating off the same set of facts. The systems, both air traffic and telecom, are not the same in the two countries.”

However, a Verizon spokesperson shot back in a statement today that there are hundreds of flights scheduled daily between the U.S. and France and that “none of those flights have FAA warnings associated with them, and there have been no direct cancellations of U.S. flights due to the use of spectrum bands in France.”

“What’s the difference? There is none,” the spokesperson added.

The telecom firms have the backing of the Federal Communications Commission, which notes that more than 40 countries have launched 5G wireless services on the C-band spectrum without any aviation interference.

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