5G is perfectly fine
outsideplatoscave.substack.com
outsideplatoscave.substack.com
And again, what is all of this for? Faster downloads of instagram photos? I don't get it. How about starting with infrastructure projects that matter like fiber - some people in the US only have DSL as an option...
Following the Chinese WHO debacle and how much faith I have in the phone industry I, personally, don't believe the hype and the studies they produce even if they deem it "safe."
~80% of the US population is urban, ~70% in large urbanized areas and ~10% in smaller urban clusters, per the census bureau. A majority of the US is not in a city only by empty land area, not people.
Which isn't to say that it isn't important to also have solutions that work for the other 20%, but things that are only valuable for the urban 80% remain quite valuable.
A third of the population isn't something to disregard. Their suggestion is that a holistic approach could be taken. But maybe this isn't too much an issue of resource allocation (ie 5G deployment may not be zero sum with fiber deployment, particularly if the considered regions are disjoint)
Oh well, hopefully Starlink or something can help raise the floor on rural internet access quality
That's a true statement but most uses of "5G" are talking about mm-wave. There's no question that lower frequencies, already in use for 4G or adjacent to those, will get the evolutionary bump to 5G.
And don't forget to consider the need/benefit side. If your 2-7GHz towers won't be saturated, even a free pile of mm-wave antennas isn't worth the maintenance costs.
There is opposing research with different conclusions that 5G may not be so safe, which I am sure many people choose to ignore since they contradict the WHO, and TV media reports.
Its about sources and authority. Finding the truth is difficult.
This is a simplistic and lazy when it comes to something that is built on well understood scientific principles. This line of thinking is what gives us flocks of people believing in easily debunked conspiracy theories. People who don't understand gas compression leading to condensation believe in chemtrails because a false authority tells them to and people who don't understand electromagnetic radiation search for an authority to tell them what conclusion to come to and reject in depth explanations.
Much of medicine ends up being built on statistics because of the difficulty of drilling down to the underlying mechanics of what happens inside a living body. Statistics can be easily abused since most of the flaws end up being about what is not said and not measured.
Electromagnetic radiation comes out of light bulbs at even higher frequencies. No one seems to worry about halogen lights and heat lamps.
5G is a broad spectrum of frequencies, what specific frequency and amplitude are you worried about?
I suggest you consider the possibility that language like this may do more to increase the magnitude of "conspiracy theorists" than your claim. The actual answer to the question is not known, and I suspect there's a decent chance that you don't actually know much about the people you're criticizing.
I don't imagine the network as a whole will upgrade to 5g-only.
As for radio safety: anyone talking about the towers is underinformed. If there is a risk it's from the high power TX next to your head - see EU "SAR" limits.
5G only is fine, as it encompasses more modes of operation than just the millimetre-wave model.
That can often be accommodated quite well by conference WiFi though.
Unlike cable companies, the “national emergency” and need to “catch up” to the Chinese allows the telcos to drop poles anywhere and avoid pole rent, etc.
It’s probably one of the grossest examples of corruption at the federal level, which is a high bar.
In my city, 90% of the 5G poles are new, some feet away from existing poles. Federal rules give the locality no power to deny placement, only to make limited cosmetic changes, and only in a period of 30 days or less.
If someone wants to show that 5g is dangerous they need to first demonstrate they understand why those claims aren’t taken seriously.
This is completely not true, and the foregoing article ignores numerous aspects of the potential health concerns of millimeter wave radiation in the 95Ghz area of the spectrum.
1) 95Ghz millimeter wave provably and without question has the potential for adverse affects on human tissue. Active Denial Systems (https://jnlwp.defense.gov/About/Frequently-Asked-Questions/A... for example) use 95Mhz directed energy for so-called Non Lethal Weapons technology. This is not complex.
2) Based on poor signal propagation and inability to permeate through common materials used in most building construction, 95Ghz picocells are being deployed every couple hundred feet in areas with large buildings and superstructures. This is not something that can be opted out of, especially in densely populated urban areas.
3) The adverse effects of electromagnetic fields on biological tissue was extensively researched by Dr. Robert Becker and documented in his published scientific research as well as his book The Body Electric. All of this information was suppressed by academia and big pharma, he proved exponentially increased cellular mitosis rates, damage to DNA, and a host of other ill effects from EM fields at powers significantly less than today's mobile telephones and WiFi access points. There is a massive profit motive associated with mobile telephony, the Federal Communication Commission is one of the only, if not the only, self-funded government agencies in the U.S. and if you've ever consulted for them it shows. Armani suits, 7 Series in the parking lot, the FCC has loads of cash from spectrum allocation auctions where they receive billions of dollars for each chunk of the spectrum they auction off for use by mobile carriers.
Millimeter wave 5G should be completely stopped in its tracks until conclusive studies have been conducted. Hundreds if not thousands of scientists at this point have signed public letters to this effect, I am really surprised this is even a 5G positive topic of discussion on YC.
At what energy levels?
You can use a really bright light as a denial system, but that doesn't mean a flashlight can harm someone.
Any system that relies purely on heat to cause problems does not demonstrate that the frequencies are unsafe.
These 5G picocells are phased antenna arrays that can perform beamforming with pinpoint directed energy. And they are coupled with Software Defined Radios that can be remotely upgraded with firmware updates.
Hitler almost took over the world, and we have significantly more advanced technology available to us these days since World War II. Depending on the RF front end of these picocells, what's to stop some potential next world dictator from turning all of these picocells into a global active denial system to prevent riots and civil unrest - because provably 95Ghz is already being used for ADS - especially if the picocell output power can be controlled via firmware update?
So here's your question back to you: how much output power are these picocells actually capable of?
And with active beamforming capability, what's to stop a government from turning these picocells into highly directional ADS nodes to prevent riots and protests?
These things are popping up next to tunnels and public transit ingress/egress in NYC, and public officials are refusing to comment on what they are being used for other than "it's something to do with Homeland Security":
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/09/27/mysterious-metal-tow...
All of this SDR-enabled 5G picocell gear from all vendors need to go through extensive teardown analysis from the technical community, to determine what amplifier components are being used. China wouldn't think for two seconds about rolling out that type of capability in their country to prevent civil unrest, and having remotely-upgradable amplifiers on every light pole that provably can interact with human tissue doesn't sound like a fun future to me.
Just like I could be worried that street lights are going to be used like spotlights, but I'm not.
Which was chosen because of the size factor. Other frequencies would also be able to cook food.
Do you see street lights as "littering", too? Or the countless satellite dishes?
Now for something really evil, just use traffic signs as beamforming antenna arrays :-)
Yes, actually. Light pollution is a real problem. Have you seen as many fireflies lately?
Regarding the fireflies. Not sure, think about 5 to 6 years ago maybe, and in about the same interval in the times before that. They are uncommon here, or have been on their path to extinction back from my early childhood.
Back to your question: There are ways to make them less polluting, by ensuring they only illuminate what should be illuminated, by using the right spectrum, by switching them on demand only, and so on.
I'm very aware of that aspect. But again, that's not what i meant to ask.
It seems that the most cost effective method is to use direct line of sight wireless transceiver using whatever which then does the last mile to 4G.
This whole 5G push is a solution looking for a problem.
You can upgrade 2G bands to 5G: massive coverage but without the shitty 2G protocols.
You can use 4G bands for 5G, and for 4G smartphones it will still look like 4G.
And finally, there's the possibility for low-range cells at very high frequencies. One possibility of many.
There is no need to re-build all the infrastructure. In many cases, you push a firmware update.
5G spectrum covers low-band and-mid band spectrum from 1G through 4G LTE frequencies. Then there is this new high-band. First 5G installations are deployed into new high-band.
5G installations in countryside will be low band that is more efficient than 4G/LTE. You can have _less_ base stations than LTE, not more in the low-band. 5G NR is more efficient radio interface in all bandwidths.
It's all about latency. Current 4G tech is ~50ms at best. 5G is <5ms. That opens up a whole new class of real time applications for mobile devices. Not to mention that omnipresent 5G would obliviate the need for residential fiber and be much cheaper/easier to deploy at scale.
Until then I can only see 5G hype as pure marketing from the telecom industry.
LTE is already in the <10ms area, so expect a real world latency improvement of about ~5ms.
Edit: I do agree that I literally don't see any point at all. 4G is fast enough for absolutely everything even including 4K streaming, and doesn't require a tower built on top of my house
Did you have any say in whether you installed a Wifi router in your home?
> Like the author said - these waves are just so weak they aren't doing anything to your body, not now, not in a 100 years.
People say lots of things, but sometimes the things people say are not true. This, combined with various other variables, seems to leave many people with suspicious feelings about some societal initiatives, not just 5G.
It’s almost like saying “640kb of memory will be enough for everyone”. :) Instagram, YouTube, and a wealth of other apps which are a large part of our lives now were enabled largely by 3G/4G — speed of data transfer over GPRS/EDGE was just abysmal. And I can’t even imagine what kind of apps we’ll have with lower latencies and higher data transfer rates of 5G.
The "crowded stadium" justification is BS, it's all about IoT.
Companies want to put a cell radio in every appliance you own, so they can collect telemetry and possibly send you ads. Some high value consumer products, particularly cars, are already doing this. And of course many other products are already using wifi, but in that case the user can simply choose to not enter their wifi password, denying their "smart" TV the ability to spy on them. Using cell radios takes this control away from the user, but getting that many more devices connected to cell networks will require new infrastructure that can handle the scale. Enter 5G.
My understanding of the Shannon limit is that it depends not only on the bandwidth but also on the signal-to-noise ratio. If you had no noise at all (including infinite control over the modulation and demodulation process), you could modulate an unlimited number of bits per symbol within an arbitrary finite bandwidth. Like a QAM constellation with 2⁵⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ points or something, all of which could in principle be accurately distinguished from one another in the absence of any noise.
If the signal-to-noise ratio isn't a fixed thing for RF communications in different times and places, in what way is cellular communication newly reaching the limit now? I mean I understand that some digital coding methods are considered to be fairly near optimal for a given RF environment; is the idea that they previously weren't and now they are, so there's no longer much benefit to be had from engineering improvements in that area?
You can not, unfortunately, modulate an infinite number of bits in practical implementations. The more QAM point require higher SINR to resolve. You can't have infinite SINR or Infinite Spectrum. Say you have 100Mhz of spectrum, in low band you are sharing it with others but also getting interfered by neighboring sites particularly at the cell edge.
It is extremely unethical and dangerous in my opinion to attempt to shame and censor people or pathologize their "paranoia". In most cases, despite being cynically exploited, what we're talking about is a healthy and sensible self-protective instinct. I feel safer in my society when people are free to discuss these fears without shame
When talking to a skeptic, if you are certain that a particular fear is illegitimate, be specific as to why and don't use shame to seek compliance. In many cases you'll probably find that you yourself lack the ability to clearly explain why you think their skepticism is unfounded. We all know from countless examples, even in recent history, that there are many people and organizations willing to physically harm the public's health in various ways for profit.
What I wish we would all be concerned with is not the health effects, but instead the potential for dramatically increased surveillance and control that comes with access to so much more bandwidth. Carelessly normalizing and naturalizing progress for progress's sake undermines the credibility of science and technology as tools for the greater good. More and more people are turning against us.
Second, it's also my opinion we should be concerned that certain crucial decisions about our urban environments are exempt from even the pretense of local democratic control. I for one do not want to live in a city where critical infrastructure is governed by a large top-down international private corporate consensus, but it seems that's where we are headed.
Definitely a shame that they make so many phones without microSD slots, though.
Just don't buy those phones and that problem is solved.
Setting aside whether that assumption is true, you don't have Wi-Fi?
"Human Exposure to RF Fields in 5G Downlink" Imtiaz Nasim, Seungmo Kim https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.03683
Better switch back to 2G by that logic then cause 3/4G also requires higher density of towers
Or do you have evidence that they’re a pollution problem?
The average person keeps their phone for 3 years or less anyway, and 5G is being deployed over a much longer timescale.
basically, reassuring those prone towards conspiracy cult beliefs due to insufficient science education and a general bent towards such theories will tend to backfire. just saying "it's ok" won't work.
break it down and immunize them to future silly beliefs due to understanding the electromagnetic spectrum, etc.
once they understand that everything below visible light just makes molecules wiggle, spin, hop, MOVE around, and doesn't structurally alter them then when some random youtuber says "absorbtion band oxygen water bla bla" you can understand that it's a low-efficiency microwave oven at best, lol
the other thing is: a tendency for those without a basic science education to presume that all of humanity is equally ignorant of this stuff. one can show them photos of how we learned this stuff the hard way, ranging from Mdm Curie to the hapless armed services assistants to various Manhattan project tests etc. not to mention the denizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc. We learned about the high absorption band around 60ghz back in submarine communications 101 as that range won't work for long range comm...
TLDR; "Analysis of the currently available peer-reviewed scientific literature reveals molecular effects induced by low-intensity RFR in living cells; this includes significant activation of key pathways generating reactive oxygen species (ROS), activation of peroxidation, oxidative damage of DNA and changes in the activity of antioxidant enzymes. It indicates that among 100 currently available peer-reviewed studies dealing with oxidative effects of low-intensity RFR, in general, 93 confirmed that RFR induces oxidative effects in biological systems."
But isn't the cellphone, which will have a 5G transmitter, be effectively next to your body all the time? In all of these discussions why do we always ignore the 5G mobile devices?
And, what about when you're outside, standing below a 5G small cell, as you're taking a walk or kids are playing in the neighborhood, is it safe then? There is no wall between you and the antenna, just a few meters of air.
If your kid wants to stand right below an 5G transmitter for hours, for some reason, make sure that they use sunscreen, because otherwise they may get uncomfortable radiation burns from the sun.
Biologically, there's big difference between man-made and natural EMR.
Compare that to visible light, which is the same thing, EM radiation, but because of the way higher frequency has 100.000 times higher energy density per Watt emitted.
In general, there are only two way EM radiation can cause harm: Number one is ionizing radiation. That is, a photon contains so much energy that it can, upon hitting an electron e.g. in your skin, hurling it out to become a free radical. For radiation to be ionizing, it has to have much higher energy per photon than the 5G frequencies. Radiation starts to become ionizing at wavelengsth of about 300nm (i.e. UV light).
The only other known way is through overheating tissue until it becomes damaged. As these frequencies are absorbed by water, which is part of practically every cell, this already happens in the skin - and if your skin warms up into damaging territory, you would definitely feel that.
The demand comes from the fact that the vast majority of the world uses a cell phone as their primary computer. Paying for the Internet twice is a luxury they cannot afford. So it makes sense that the phone companies want to serve them. There is a fixed amount of spectrum available at lower frequencies that can travel longer distances, and we've used all that. So now the idea is to exploit higher frequencies where more bandwidth is available, but the trade-off is that the signals don't travel as far (attenuation by building surfaces, and even the air itself). So access points have to be closer together.
The reality is that WiFi has never worked very well. Bandwidth is allocated poorly, mostly by accident. (Claiming there are 11 channels at 2.4GHz was a big lie that cost us dearly. Bad defaults at 5GHz led people to believe it was attenuated by walls, which it really isn't -- APs just chose channels that they were only allowed to use at lower power than the 2.4GHz channels.) Any time you've seen WiFi working well involves careful site surveys and complicated software that coordinates access over a backhaul (usually wired for the ones that work, but dual radio APs that use wireless backhaul appear to work in the lab -- nobody that I know of is selling them though). 5G is basically that, but owned by the incumbent carriers instead of individuals. They can coordinate access and steer devices to the right AP, which is the #1 thing that makes short-haul radio links reliable. I agree that the circumstances suck, but funding hardware R&D has to be paid for by someone. If you want to start a company to make a peer-to-peer radio network, I say go for it. People are interested. The hardware exists. But I think you'll find that to make money, you're going to have to charge people for access, and probably provide some sort of fallback to 4G/3G for people that are out of your service area. Guess who can provide that? The incumbents. So that's why they're doing it.
It's not all bad, though. Someone has to provide backhaul for the APs, and they're often fiber. So fiber is not going away, and the technology will not stop being developed. It is likely that the fiber ISP that sells service to the cell phone companies will also be happy to sell it to you. It really comes down to how easy it is to lay the fiber to your location. In some cities, they built subways under every street for power and Internet (Manhattan has a huge network). In environments like that, it's easy for anyone to sell you a connection. I worked for an ISP that did exactly that, and it was great. The biggest barrier we had was buildings wanting to charge the ISP to provide service to the building. That isn't profitable for the ISP, so they simply say they can't serve you.
My TL;DR is: encourage your municipality to make it easy to provide fiber to your location, and someone will. You can buy the necessary equipment to start a fiber ISP with a credit card. I say go for it.
That sounds really interesting. Care to list stuff needed to bootstrap a fiber ISP?
And some ONTs: https://www.ui.com/ufiber/ufiber-nano-g/
(I have not used these, but the price is right.)
Obviously the hard part is stringing a fiber between your datacenter and the customer.