Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worry in particular about the towers being in close proximity to schools and housing developments.
Do you own a microwave oven?
No
Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
371–380 of 433 posts
Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it will or should bring competition to Comcast and cable companies alike! Who doesn't want more options for home broadband?
But it will or should bring competition to Comcast and cable companies alike! I'll believe it when it happens. DSL was going to break the chains of the dialup overlords. Cable was going to break the chains of the DSL overlords. Fiber was going to break the chains of the cable overlords. Fixed wireless was going to break the chains of the fiber overlords. My prediction: 5G data providers will pull the same tricks as w…
It's not correct to say that prices never fall. I purchased 5 mbps fiber from Verizon when it was brand new - $60 / month in 2005, I think. Today, Comcast's bottom tier is 15 mbps, at $30 / month. DSL-speed internet (768 kbps) isn't even available as an option.
The market might not function as competitively as it should in the US, but it still functions - new, cheaper tech eventually results in lower prices for consumers.
Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. There are lots of places where coverage and bandwidth are still bad, but 5G is actually less suited to solve that problem than 4G, especially given where it's being deployed. They're pushing on the already-high peak instead of filling the massive gaps at the lower end.
Well if you have download more data per second then you can deal with more spottiness. Because the goal is to download something. A 1Gb/s connection for half a second is better than a 100mb/s connection for 5 seconds
That's not the point; the point is 4G is still mostly just in major cities, and 5G is only in very select major cities. There are places where you still can't even get a reliable 3G signal. It'll be decades before those places get 5G.
Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well if you have download more data per second then you can deal with more spottiness. Because the goal is to download something. A 1Gb/s connection for half a second is better than a 100mb/s connection for 5 seconds
Isn't the average server more likely to sustain 100Mb/s for 5 seconds than 1Gb for half a second?
From data I've seen? No. 500ms is a pretty short time.
But my point is that there's the consideration that it takes half a second to download 500Mb (roughly a 720p video). So if you have 0.5s uninterrupted that's pretty convenient. I'm also pretty positive that coverage will increase from current conditions (I don't see a reason why it wouldn't). So the speed helps with the spottines. Basically what I'm saying is you don't need as long of a connection to download the same amount. If your spottiness is the same then you get more on 5G. Alternatively since it is 10x the speed, that would be equivalent to 10x spottines (which were not considering a fallback to 4/3G).
Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where I live 4G is good and so cheap that I am thinking about dropping my DSL connection. I would still need a wifi-router as my laptop and my tv does not support 4G. But my guess is eventually those devices will support xG mobile data and my wifi-router will be a thing of the past.
Been doing this for a few years now..AT&T UL data hotspot SIM ($20.mo, aka 'Mobley' plan) plugged into a TMobile ASUS AC1900 router...tripled my speed of Sonic DSL, for 1/3 the cost of Sonic DSL. Do it.
AT&T UL data hotspot SIM $25 is 3GB per month. @ $50/mo for 10GB means no video streaming (eg. Netflix). DSL gives you 1.5Mb 24/7.
I went the Sprint 50GB (really 100GB) @ $60 per month.
Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
#376There's such weird marketing zealotry behind 5G. They're acting like it's going to completely reshape society, but at best it's just... faster internet. In places where the internet is already pretty fast. I can only assume it's a mixture of political and economic stakeholders that have their own reasons for really wanting it to succeed (looking competitive against China, selling new phones, etc.)
Indeed. What's the point in being able to use up the 22GB data cap on my "unlimited" plan in five minutes instead of seventy minutes?
The reason their are low caps like 22GB is because LTE networks have limited bandwdith. These 5G networks will have 10X bandwidth.
Eventually, the carriers will increase bandwidth caps.
Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure the US should allocate resources to do that either. But that’s irrelevant, all countries have an interest in the success of their industry, and the strength of their utility infrastructure. These things have been a matter of political interest for millennia.
But what's the failure case here? The US corporations end up buying more mature technology that's already been tested and funded by other nations?
Besides the simple economic downsides of not selling the product, there are concerns about implementing critical infrastructure with a more nebulous chain-of-custody or engineering governance model.
Companies that manufacture critical infrastructure within one's own legal/political jurisdiction(s) can be held accountable -- whereas those actions wouldn't be as possible for those outside of that jurisdiction.
Or to put it more bluntly -- cyber warfare has been going strong for at least a couple of decades now and has only escalated in recent years.
Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to imply that you are, but I prefer to embrace nuance rather than neglect it myself by dismissing misunderstandings of it. WiFi is a lot like a microwave, just with some important differences. WiFi is just modulated and about 1/1000th the power. There are real reasons why SAR regulations exist. I blame the misunderstanding squarely on journalists who picked up early stories about SAR limit studies and did an awfu…
Microwaves operate using standing waves (that's what does the cooking). Wi-Fi doesn't. People who say "WiFi is like a microwave" aren't trying to educate other people about the EM spectrum. They're trying to fearmonger by saying "WiFi is cooking you like a microwave".
Or, as I suggested, they simply misunderstand. It's not a difficult analogy to respond to. Many people have microwaves, and they're safe, even though they even leak some of their radiation. We have standards for microwave emissions just like we have standards for wifi power limits.
Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frequency of use doesn’t equate to importance. Example: checking 100 phone notifications about spam email is probably less important to society than a radio alert about a tornado warning.
Good thing tornado warning is now a loud mobile phone alert. I'd expect people mostly listen to radio because they are bored while driving, which has about as much "importance".
There's something to be said about the utility of old analog systems during emergency situations -- which is part of the responsibility of the FCC to account for.
Dead phones and offline towers are not unheard of in disaster situations.
For example: https://twitter.com/CarmenScurato/status/910957644256546817
Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 90 percent of Americans over age 12 listen to AM/FM radio at least once a week — down 2 percent since 2009. (This does not include public media, which Pew covered in a separate fact sheet.) Source: https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/07/am-fm-radio-holds-strong-f...
Once a week vs once an hour gives us clear winner. https://nypost.com/2017/11/08/americans-check-their-phones-8...
It didn't say once a week, it said 90% at least once a week. It could be that 89% listen for 4 hours every day. Likewise, 12 minutes for checking the phone was an average. It could be 1% of people staring at their phone every waking hour.
I doubt it's either of those things. We can't begin to make quantitative comparisons with those bare facts. I just thought we could make a very simple qualitative deduction--that terrestrial radio is far more popular than many people believe.