The Debate Over Neighborhood Zoning Could Hold Up Fast 5G Wireless for Years | Hacker News Reader

The Debate Over Neighborhood Zoning Could Hold Up Fast 5G Wireless for Years

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95 pointshourislate80 comments

My neighborhood Nextdoor is full of NIMBY on this topic. Apparently electrosensitivity afflicts some 90-95% of people who have the free time to go to city council meetings at 3pm on weekdays. Shungite pendants have been recommended to fend off the illnesses caused by radiation. Even the local school does not have wifi because some local bozo said his kids were "injured" by EM fields, not just any fields but specifically ISM wavelengths that are tuned to disrupt our precious cells.

I'd be frankly surprised if urban America ever gets 5G service while this kind of ignorance holds sway.

I hate these idiots. I got into an argument with one who was concerned with the RF from their smart electric meter. I tried to explain the difference between ionizing radiation and non-ionizing, DNA 'damage', and such. No such luck getting through to them even when presented with scientific fact. I usually tell them they should be more concerned with sun exposure than anything, if they are worried about DNA damage.

It's like they want a handy excuse for feeling like crap. Superstitious magical thinking. 300 years ago they'd be blaming a witch for their problems. I always think of the character Chuck from Better Call Saul whenever I run into someone like this.

There are a couple of known mechanisms by which non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation can be dangerous to biological systems.

One is by heating of tissue caused by absorption of EM radiation. This one can probably be safely ignored in almost all normal situations.

Another is by inducing currents and fields in parts of the organism which could disrupt normal operation.

For example, DNA is conductive, and its shape makes it act like a fractal antenna which is good at allowing a wide range of EM radiation to induce currents in it [1].

Damage and errors in the DNA can change the conductivity, and there are some researchers who think that the cell may use this as part of the mechanism that detects and deals with such damage. Induced currents from an external EM wave could cause such a mechanism to miss some damage, and so fail to detect and kill a cell that normally would have been eliminated.

Here's an article that talks briefly about some of this [2].

As far as I know it is still just speculation that the cell uses changes in conduction to detect damage. It's a plausible mechanism, but that doesn't mean it is the only possible mechanism or the one nature actually uses.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21457072

[2] https://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-chemist-jacqueline-bart...

Thank you for posting this!

There is a basic physical issue here. For an EM wave to induce any sort of voltage difference across the length of a DNA molecule it would have have a wavelength on the order of that molecule's size.

Uncoiled, DNA is about 2m long.

Hmmm, better not get that kilowatt kicker amp for my baofeng.

Coiled up in a bag of salt water, it's not going to be a very good antenna...

Nextdoor can be interesting.

One of our neighbors posted a photo of "chemtrails" and explained her worries about the military jets that are pumping this poison into our skies. She asked if anyone had noticed the particular "X marks the spot" pattern that the chemtrails made that day targeting our neighborhood.

I said that our area (SF Peninsula) has major north-south and east-west airline traffic routes overhead, so it would not be surprising to see an occasional "X" pattern in the sky.

I also mentioned that the trails in her photo actually looked like formations of crystalline dihydrogen monoxide, and I provided a helpful link to http://dhmo.org/ where she could learn more about DHMO.

She thanked me for the post and started citing some of the information from the DHMO FAQ in her subsequent comments!

Nextdoor is a brazen display of all the stupid things you hope your neighbors aren't into. And you can't even use Nextdoor to help you "shop" for the right neighborhood. You can only join after you've moved. They'll only show you the naked insanity once you've committed.

Technology and "progress" are never without problems or externalities. And residents of MBY are the ones who deserve the right of self-determination regarding said BY. Including evaluating whether they are going to get proportionally enough benefit from a project to justify the costs they will inevitably bear from having it situated there. They have a right to be suspicious of EM radiation, or even downright superstitious. But what about the mere fact that it's simply an ugly-ass tower? Maybe they're just fine with 4G or even 3G service and they're like "no thanks." So your challenge is, how do you present the value proposition in any non-condescending and convincing way? If you don't agree with their reasons, fine, but then it's up to you to make an honest go of persuading them, and if they still don't go for it, oh well. Maybe try building it in your own BY. But the arrogance represented by your viewpoint is not going to win any battles or friends. "Oh my mistake, thank you so much for educating me!" is what nobody will say ever. They can be arrogant too, just as easily. And stubborn.

You don’t bother. You move to a neighborhood where people mind their own business and don’t mind a little infrastructure (or the occasional non-functioning auto) in their back yards.

The problem with the term NIMBY is that it isn't really about anyone's back yard. It's about people who live somewhere trying to control what happens on nearby property.

You are trying to have it both ways by talking about both externalities and "self-determination regarding said BY". The latter makes if you are only "saying respect property" rights: let people have as many voodoo charms and do as crystal-power-empathetic-gardening as they like.

But if you say that their complaints can override the rights of others because of externalities, then there must be a rational case about about those externalities. Harm from radio waves doesn't have much rational case behind it.

"Back yard" is a figure of speech, just like it is in the acronym. The people of X should determine what happens in X, where X can be <land parcel>, <neighborhood>, <city>, <state> or <nation>. However as you can imagine, there are going to be conflicts between what the people of a larger entity want vs. what the people of a smaller contained entity want. The interests of the people of <state> might conflict with the interests of the people of <land parcel> for example. So it gets murky fast.

I happen to think we should try to err in favor of the smaller entity. Which takes care of a couple of problems: It satisfies property rights as you're saying. And it prevents a small entity from forcing its will on another comparably small entity by appealing to the larger entity that contains them both, which it sounds like you're also concerned about.

But the impact scope needs to be properly defined. Erring in favor of the smaller entity means you define the scope as small as possible. But to remain fair, go no smaller. For one of these towers, the scope of impact is probably <neighborhood>. That's how wide its transmit/receive radius will be (smaller than today's towers), and that's probably also how far you'll have to go until that particular tower isn't visible (which isn't a rational argument by the way, but an aesthetic one, probably lost on anyone born after 1990 and accustomed to seeing shitty towers everywhere).

My point wasn't the merits of any particular argument; I only brought that up to shock someone into realizing people can have contrary opinions, including for no good reason, and if you want to persuade them you have to meet them where they are, just like if you were selling a product to a customer.

Well maybe a start could be not letting them complain about poor coverage.

I know some people are sensitive to RF radiation - I know I am, but generally only when the measured field strength is well outside of 'safe' bounds ;-)

Show me double-blind testing of someone being able to accurately pin point an access point or cell site however, and I've got a job for them.

Wait until they find out particulate air pollution can do! Or am I correct in guessing they haven't worried about the obvious large risks present already in everyday life?

The important issue here is what exactly do they mean by Fast 5G. In many cases what they mean is femtocells using the very same frequency range as existing consumer wifi routers. The instant one of these femtocells starts operating around wifi the routers in the area will drop thoroughput drastically (ie, 80%+) due to their channel usage sensing.

Lets be clear: this is attempt to use capture and use public spectrum by pushing things like home/building wifi out and forcing everything through centralized telecom.

So, no change then? Since those "home wifi" connections come through a centrally owned comms network.

It's a big change. Telco-provided wireless internet connections are not actually real internet connections. Half the time you don't even get a real routable IP address and nearly 100% of the time you don't get ports or even the ability to forward them. And that's not even mentioning the horrible data transfer limits and traffic shaping.

Whereas home connections are real, have real IPs, and have full ports that you control and generally have at least a few hundred GB of data transfer with no traffic shaping.

So... back to Ethernet?

NIMBY!

unlicensed LTE is not needed for 5G, its actually a 4G technology.

You can have 5G without using unlicensed spectrum.

This article tries to imply that the millimeter wave spectrum was somehow undervalued and that now it will perform magic. But it won't. It's all line of sight and it won't go through walls. So yeah, they'll fall back on to stealing the appropriately highly valued public spectrum.

I'm split. 5G is great but is also being used in a political game re the definition of broadband. ISPs in my area (western canada) are using the existence of faster wireless to claim they are offering broadband to rural addresses via wireless rather than build out proper infrastructure. The stagnation of cable/DSL broadband speeds and basic availability is having serious economic impact. Areas without cable/DSL service are becoming retirement homes devoid of young people as anyone wanting to actually use the internet must shovel money into expensive mobile accounts. 5G's improvements might just continue this pattern.

For what it's worth, the ISPs could probably find a way to offer DSL-style metering on 5G networks in places they're not willing to enhance DSL (or lay fiber). If there's less local traffic on the licensed bands, then it should not really cost any more. The fact is, most Canadian home broadband connections are slower than most metropolitan LTE connections in both latency and throughput.

In my personal opinion, reliance on carrier ISPs is the problem. It is not supremely difficult or expensive to set up a line-of-sight radio network; and when ISP service personnel have to come from the nearest city, it could ultimately be much more reliable. If the government is subsidizing telcos to do the work of expanding to rural or remote areas, then they should make that subsidy available to individuals instead/as well, so they can find the way that will get them the most broadband.

The problems are rather the data caps for mobile networks at least in Germany: Nearly every DSL or similar broadband connection comes without data caps and when the Deutsche Telekom tried to introduce data caps a few years ago, there was a large outcry and threats to go to another provider. The Deutsche Telekom soon caved in. On the other hand for mobile connections people tolerate these data caps - and complain about them: I often tell people that they should start a temporal synchronized action to terminate their mobile contract - and tell the provider that they do it because of the data caps - you would not believe how fast these data caps would disappear.

>> ... large outcry and threats to go to another provider.

Not an option in rural canada. There aren't any second providers. Even where two may exist for cellular coverage, only one will likely provide reasonable signal in a particular rural location. As for cable/DSL, there is no competition whatsoever. The only real option for protest is through government ombudsmen. hence my point about 5G being used in debates over the provision of broadband services.

Yes, in the German system Internet over the phone lines has to be open to other providers, so for ADSL there always is competition and thus it's hard for a single provider to worsen conditions for ADSL customers (also takes away competition as incentive to physically improve the infrastructure though).

Do you have virtual carriers (MVNs)?

No.

My experience in Canada: both Cable/DSL and LTE/mobile networks have data caps; but the former has caps in the ~120-300GB range, whereas the latter has caps in the 6-12 GB range.

Why is this a bad thing? I don't understand why you think every rural backwater needs to be subsidized to the tune of billions by the productive regions of the world. We should be looking to returning 95%+ of land to nature as we urbanize more and more.

I wish more companies and governments would do what the ISPs are doing. Why am I paying for post offices in rural America? Why am I paying to subsidize electricity transportation to rural America?

So the people living there aren't left behind too much. It is in your best interest to retain some social cohesion.

What if some people like that? Why is the link with social cohesion? Why would it be a best interest? Uniformity for uniformity sake?? And at which cost as the OP said??

Different people have different tastes. I enjoy being offline when I am in the countryside. I am fine with a slow connection, as it lets me concentrate on actual work instead of wasting time online.

I pushed the logic further, and since last year, I have no fixed line internet connection at home.

I would love to find a house not too far from the city, yet without broadband. It would be a relaxing place to live. If there is no government mandate forcing ISP to provide connectivity in the middle of nowhere, the savings could be passed back to me in the form of lower taxes.

So basically I would get a) something I want and that is hard to get today b) less taxes.

Sign me up!

They are free to move to cities any time.

You're footing the bill? How generous.

We are footing the bill for them to live there already. Rural areas are subsidized an incredible amount to our severe detriment. There is almost no decent forested area I can get to in the Midwest and it is only getting worse. Pollution is getting worse as people move further out. People are trapped and either have to get an expensive car or deal with riding poorly set up transit for hours a day. It is ridiculous.

So it's not that they're free to move, it's just that you resent their very existence.

I live out in the boonies. There is a strong percentage of people on sites like this (reddit in particular) that think I'm some kind of geoboomer for not selling my home and renting a sixth story apartment in an urban setting.

The fact that I selected to live here also makes me an uneducated bigot that hates brown folks and will almost certainly re-up in ~38 months.

Okay, but why do we have to foster that social cohesion in the most expensive way possible? Why demand that connectivity in these rural areas be by wireline instead of much cheaper wireless? Okay, people need access. Let’s get it done as cheaply and with as little market distortion as possible. The thing that does that is wireless.

No one will be starting an internet company in a location where there is only mobile internet.

>lets get it done as cheaply and with as little market distortion as possible.

Why do people act like they're paying for personally? This was already agreed upon by communication companies when they were allowed to monopolize much higher ROI urban markets. The whole point was that the high ROI markets would fund the development of the rest of the infrastructure.

Sandbagging the bandwidth of the rural markets is creating an information void that ends up sandbagging support for research and development in other areas.

We don’t need people to start internet companies in areas that are no longer viable. And yes, you are paying for those rural subsidies personally. Literally, through a tax on your telecommunications bill each month. Also, the original idea was to give telecom companies monopolies to allow them to use above-market returns to subsidize rural areas. This was a terrible idea and gave us the entrenched incumbents we have today. In the 1990s, Congress realized this was terrible and got rid of that arrangement, shifting to explicit cross subsidization. But service and build out requirements continue to stifle development of competition. You can’t, as a new entrant, do stuff like pursue a profitable niche (startup 101 advice). And a special tax is levied on your product, as if it were something harmful like cigarettes.

There is no free lunch! If you force urban areas to cross-subsidize rural ones, either directly or indirectly, you’ll get lower quality service at higher prices in urban area.

Look at the regulatory regimes in places like Sweden. They don’t have build out requirements or cross subsidies. To the extent the government wants connectivity in rural places, it doesn’t distort the market by having high-ROI places cross-subsidize it. It pays for it directly.

I totally agree. That's why those people should be given two choices: A) move into urban areas or B) die.

Had we taken that approach a century ago most farms would never have never been electrified. It wouldn't have been worth the effort for the utilities to run the lines absent government mandates. (fyi, this has returned as a huge problem today. Utilities charge massive amounts to electrify new developments in rural areas. If it requires more than a pole or two, the cheaper option is to build your own offgrid setup. Poles cost about 15k each in my area.)

There are so many discussions here about information tech changing farms, generally making them better and more efficient. That needs bandwidth. Want retirees to visit their doc via webcam, which saves money/time for all involved? That too needs bandwidth. Bandwidth is the new electricity.

Assuming you are correct that utilities would not have done it freely, then those farms should not have been electrified. It would have sped of the consolidation and industrialization of farming by 100 years by forcing small farmers to either die or sell their land and move to the cities.

These towers are popping up all over San Francisco. Another one got installed a few doors up a couple of weeks ago.

They're hard to notice as they're generally quite well disguised. Usually just an extended bulge on top of a light pole. If it's a wooden pole, they'll paint it so it blends in.

According to the local articles there is actually little recourse for locals in objecting: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/10/31/san-francisco-re... (warning - several annoying autoplay videos).

Update: just walked past one https://photos.app.goo.gl/I8MWfox0eB6G7ztD2

> warning - several annoying autoplay videos

NoScript in default deny JS mode - zero auto-play videos yet I was able read the whole article.

Huh thanks for the photo. You're not wrong about it blending in well.

I wonder at what point we'll start seeing people simply stop paying for in-home internet via WiFi in favor of relying solely on their mobile data package, in the same way that people stopped paying for corded phone lines and are starting to stop paying for cable television. For some reason I'm frightened at the prospect... is it because I trust my ISP more than my wireless carrier?

When it's cheaper than traditional wired networking systems.

In many developing countries, this is the norm. No fast internet access, maybe DSL if there's a land line but "pocket wifi" for all.

I am not sure the current capacity of mobile networks could handle a majority of people going mobile only. Since mobile bandwidth is shared the experience could be quite bad in population dense areas. Imo wired Internet will be around for a while, unless 5G changes things a lot, but I don't know enough about that.

This is not uncommon here in Turkey. I end up using my iPhone as a modem via USB tethering often. Mobile internet is much faster in Turkey (100+ mbs for cheap) than the wired network. It only adds ~10ping and can handle anything.

I'm willing to bet this will be the norm worldwide when 5G rolls out. Here in Turkey we have '4.5G' which is a marketing term for the latest generation 4G infrastructure. We only got 4G last year here, so we have the latest hardware.

Really? I just returned from a 2-week vacation in Turkey (Izmir, Cesme) and I was lucky to get working internet at all roaming on Turkcell. When it did connect, the speeds were ~4 mbps (iPhone6s - Verizon). Not sure if that's just because I was roaming.

If you were roaming then all your data is being tunneled back to the US to Verizon's network / a US IP.

It's very possible that Verizon is limiting your bandwidth so that they don't have to pay the Turkish providers as much for the network usage.

In addition, you are probably getting QoSed by the provider itself.

Did you think to walk into a Turkcell store and buy a SIM card + prepaid bandwidth? 6GB LTE + 500 minutes/texts is 50 lira (~$15)

Lots of people already do this. If you're a light/occasional internet user it makes way more sense to buy a 5GB/month dongle and use that instead vs getting hard wired broadband. This doesn't even include the fact loads of people only access the internet through a smartphone and not a computer, which means they probably won't bother with hardwired at all.

The more difficult is heavy internet users. Considering an LTE cell site has between 100 and 1gigabit of capacity across all of it, and there is hundreds/thousands of customers connected, it's hard to see how this would work for more heavy internet demands (HD video streaming, etc) without it all grinding to a halt.

Several years ago, Clearwire had a WiMAX network which they marketed as an alternative to home broadband in addition to the usual mobile applications. They sold a home modem that looked a lot like a standard cable modem, except there was no cable. They had an unlimited plan and advertised speeds that were not great, but acceptable. (I think 3Mbps? I had 6Mbps from Comcast at the time.)

I was so fed up with Comcast at that point that I gave them a try. Turned out they overpromised a wee bit. Before long, my speeds were throttled into the ground, in the neighborhood of 50kbps during peak times. Worse, they gave me the runaround when I tried to get it fixed, and it took me quite a while to get a straight answer about why my speeds sucked so hard. Before long I was back to Comcast. No surprise, Clearwire and their network eventually failed.

The idea of wireless broadband good enough to support routine home use is really attractive. It feels like the technology is almost there now.

I know a few foreigners here in Japan using in home units like that. They arnt heavy users, so Hardline just isn't worth it for them.

They never complain about speed to me when I ask (then again I doubt they would even notice, unless it was really bad, not exactly techs).

I have considered it, but then again the price of a 1gb/s is so damn cheap here . . .

Yes, Relish in London tried the same thing. Unlimited plan, advertised up to 50mbit/sec speeds, quickly fell apart, as you're saying sub-dialup speeds at peak times and a mobile operator bought them for the spectrum.

I've been doing this for the last 5 years. These days, we average about a 1 TB / month on 4G LTE. Somehow, we've avoided carrier throttling. Although we live in a rural area, so there is little congestion anyway. A single hotspot is sufficient for all our home internet devices. If you're going to do this, it's important to have a (preferably grandfathered) unlimited data plan.

Which carrier is this? Verizon has promised to kick anyone going over 200GB/month off completely. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/01/11...

I am being pressured by my significant other to give up my two grandfathered lines since it works out to $60/line + $80 for the plan every month, and they now offer other "unlimited" options.

> I am being pressured by my significant other to give up my two grandfathered lines since it works out to $60/line + $80 for the plan every month, and they now offer other "unlimited" options.

Can I ask why you're not giving it up? That price sounds really high.

There are a number of advantages to the grandfathered unlimited plans that are kinda complicated. Basically, there are fewer restrictions on the kind of devices you can use the SIM cards in, and the scenarios where they can throttle you are different. Some plans also include subsidized device upgrades every two years.

I live on the east coast, and I already cut th e cord like that. I have no ISP anymore.

It started as an experiment. I still have several mobile devices, each with own unlimited plan, through different operators. AT&T is providing access to the TV doing Netflix/amazon/hulu. Sprint is providing access to my tablets, laptop and iphone. My main phone is a windows phone dual sim with AT&T for data, and Tmobile prepaid for voice service. I am comparing coverage, costs, and see what fits my needs.

My conclusion so far: I don't miss my ISP, and hardly feel a difference. I plan to cut service further. It will force me out of my home to socialize more, which is a good thing.

I think I will be keeping unlimited access only for my laptop, likely through sprint (because you get routable IpV4s with the right APN!) and Tmobile prepaid service on my windows phone for the rare occasion I need to be called even when my laptop is turned off.

> I wonder at what point we'll start seeing people simply stop paying for in-home internet via WiFi in favor of relying solely on their mobile data package, in the same way that people stopped paying for corded phone lines and are starting to stop paying for cable television.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more movement in the other direction. There are very inexpensive WiFi-first phone plans ($20/month + data), which in combination with the fact that WiFi exists in the places where many people spend 95+% of their time means that the plan ends up just being the $20/month, because you so rarely actually have to use any cellular data.

It's true that many people spend 95+% of their time on wifi, but we still need to be reachable when in transit. It would be interesting if there were a super-light cellular package that only offered minimal data/calls. I think this is basically what Comcast is rolling out, using the Verizon network as a fallback. The primary method of routing calls is over your own wifi, and over xfinitywifi hotspots at many broadband customers' homes. As a result, the price is much lower than Verizon.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/17/16159084/comcast-xfinity-...

The plans exist. Google Fi is $20/month with unlimited calls and texts but metered data. You can also buy prepaid minutes and data from several carriers with no monthly fee, you just pay for it as you use it, but then you're paying for minutes as well as data.

True Story:

I worked on cellular buildouts in Seattle - we had a site in the City of Seattle proper to do a upgrade on the equipment there - its a relatively painless process (swap out hardware at bottom, new antennas, add tower top radios, replace coax on tower with hybrid cables with DC and Fiber in them), yet it took three years to get permits issued. In Federal Way there was another site of similar configuration (Monopole, same gear in both locations), it took less than 30 days to get the permit issued.

If you want to know why your network is so slow, and why cellular service can be expensive - thats why. Endless process, neighbors complaining about towers (radiation, unsightliness, noise, opposed to construction traffic for a week), and the people needed to shove the paperwork along.

It would be really helpful to know what concrete actions to take to my City Council, if I want this to happen. Is there model legislation I can point at? What about my city's current processes is helpful or harmful to adding 5G? How can I find ISP's interested in making this happen in my town?

This is an area I have experience and expertise in. Look at Master License Agreements in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Charlotte. Some states also have uniform legislation snaking its way through the various bodies, including Virginia, Ohio, Washington, Minnesota, Colorado, Florida, and California. Some is driven by ALEC and/or the wireless carriers, so it may be aggressively pro-deployment (to the detriment of local cities), but it's at least somewhere to look. If you're interested, PM me and I can share some materials on this, or at least discuss further.

PM? How?

Based on comment history I assume info@docketdaily.com gets to him.

That domain is expired: http://whois.domaintools.com/docketdaily.com

There is no PM functionality on Hacker News, and I don't see contact information in your profile.

Based on comment history I assume info@docketdaily.com gets to him.

That domain is expired: http://whois.domaintools.com/docketdaily.com

You should check if your city has a planning commission/committee, and ask them. Or, just ask this question directly to the City Council -- not every communication to a city has to be a prepared presentation... you can simply make known, in general, what you want, so they can be informed as they do their work.

I haven't followed 5G planning/predictions in a few years, but the last big deal I recall in this area was having the 5G included in the home broadband offerings. In other words, the current U-Verse/FiOS modem/router would also have a 5G microcell in it.

That would help with some of these issues as it relates to pole access and such.

Verizon bought Straight Path for some billions so you are going to get 5g no matter if you like it or not.

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