
Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying - sverige
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cities-are-saying-no-to-5g-citing-health-aestheticsand-fcc-bullying-11566619391?mod=rsswn
======
_bxg1
There'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.)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _at best it 's just... faster internet_

Counterpoint: streaming audio and video were singularly enabled by faster
internet. That is restructuring multibillion-dollar industries. The iPhone,
one could argue, and through it real-time social media, are products of mobile
internet.

There are legitimate new capabilities that will likely erupt from cheaper,
faster mobile internet. If the playground is in Shenzhen versus Silicon
Valley, that’s where resources should be allocated to explore that potential.

I’m not arguing for 5G. (I don’t know enough about it.) But “it’s just faster
internet” is a facile counterargument.

~~~
chvid
Funny how people even on a tech website seems to be stuck at "640 KB is enough
for everyone".

When technology gets a lot cheaper, a lot more powerful, a lot less power
consuming, the magic of the market creates completely new categories of use
that unlock new demand at consumers.

Right now your phone has a sim-card. There might be one in your tablet or your
car too. But there is not one in your TV or the lights in your bathroom. But
at some point telecommunications technology is going to be so cheap that
drawing a wire to connect a button to a light is going to be the expensive
option.

5G is a step on the way.

~~~
delecti
Obviously sentiments like "640 KB is enough for everyone" hilariously failed
to predict the value of faster and more powerful computers. At the same time,
most people's personal use of computers hasn't kept up with the capabilities
of the high-end of consumer grade products. Lots of people only really use a
web browser, and even an ad-infested website will run fine on most 10-20 year
old computers.

You can say "we don't need to frantically rush to deploy 5G" without also
saying "nobody will ever benefit from 5G".

~~~
chvid
> You can say "we don't need to frantically rush to deploy 5G" without also
> saying "nobody will ever benefit from 5G".

Sure. But that just means that the products exploiting this technology won't
be developed in your neighbourhood but instead in Korea or China.

~~~
corodra
How would and how many lives will be made better with 5g? Will it help people
with debt? Will it increase housing supply to lower home ownership/renting
costs? Will it help people stop overdosing? Maybe cool the climate a little?

No. Itll help people watch someone on youtube play Fortnite.

~~~
merpnderp
Just because you’re mostly correct doesn’t mean you’re correct. My watch is
always asking me if I’ve fallen and need emergency services (I horse around a
lot), but wearable connected medical devices are and will be a big thing. I
have lots of friends and family who kill time taking online courses or
watching educational videos.

This is the same argument badmouthing the Internet because of social media
which ignores that the presocial media Internet is still there and just as
vibrant.

~~~
corodra
You can already stream online courses and watch educational videos with 4g...
same with wireless medical devices. What does 5g offer that 4g already hasn't?

~~~
lozf
5g has higher capacity, but shorter range, so cells will need to be closer
together, i.e. greater density - therefore location tracking precision will
appear to improve, so the big corporations will be better able to finely tune
targeted ads in HD to a more specific demographic of consumers.

5G offers:-

\- bigger numbers and promise of a brighter future for consumers that are
impressed by that kind of thing and are happy to trade their privacy for
perceived benefits / status.

\- And probably some more tangible benefits for those who would attempt to
track or advertise as much as possible to monetize the masses.

\- And as you clearly understand, nothing particularly beneficial to the rest
of us, but we'll join in when eventually forced to through one upgrade or
another as usual.

~~~
labawi
There might be incidental location disclosure, but even with 2/3/4G the
network operator has pretty good location information, typical precision being
10s of meters or even less.

------
Wowfunhappy
Nilay Patel wrote an editorial over at The Verge titled "Wait, why the hell is
the ‘race to 5G’ even a race?":
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/23/18637213/5g-race-us-
leade...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/23/18637213/5g-race-us-leadership-
china-fcc-lte)

> All I’m asking is that the next time you hear a wireless industry person
> talk about the “race” to 5G, stop and ask them why it’s a race. Ask who the
> competitors are, and what happens if we come in second place. See if you buy
> the answer. I suspect you won’t hear anything convincing.

Faster internet is of course great in and of itself, but I'm not convinced
it's deserving of public subsidies or regulatory exemptions, particularly in
large cities that already have access to fast broadband. Furthermore, I'm
quite concerned about NASA's warning that 5G will weaken our ability to
forecast the weather, including life-or-death phenomena like hurricanes.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I 'm quite concerned about NASA's warning that 5G will weaken our ability
> to forecast the weather_

NASA issued no such warning.

5G would interfere with _one_ satellite-based moisture measure around
populated areas. NOAA’s commentary was around how that _one measure_ would
need to be statistically tweaked or supplemented. (The headlines resulted from
NOAA’s head warning the Congress that if the latter didn’t give him funding
for these tweaks, our forecasts would become dramatically worse.)

Hurricanes, moreover, build over oceans. AT&T can’t keep a call in my
Manhattan apartment; it’s going to be a while before 5G signals are making it
to the middle of the Atlantic.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I was repeating what I've read. When The Washington Post reported[1] about
NOAA director Neil Jacobs's testimony before congress on the issue, they
wrote:

> With this reduced forecast skill, the European model would not have
> predicted 2012′s Superstorm Sandy hitting the Northeast coast several days
> in advance, Jacobs said. Instead, the model would have steered the storm out
> to sea. Lead time to prepare for the storm would have been cut short.

Was The Washington Post mistaken?

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/05/23/head-
noaa-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/05/23/head-noaa-says-g-
deployment-could-set-weather-forecasts-back-years-wireless-industry-denies-
it/)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Was The Washington Post mistaken?_

No, they’re reporting on a valid dialectic. The topic of the story is the
discussion, not the science. (The _Post_ is a political paper. That their May
story produced zero further reporting from reputable sources is a hint.)

In lieu of listening to the hearing [1], the American Institute of Physicists
(AIP) provides a good summary [2].

TL; DR The Science Committee is debating emission limits. Nobody suggests
scrapping 5G.

[1] [https://science.house.gov/hearings/the-future-of-
forecasting...](https://science.house.gov/hearings/the-future-of-forecasting-
building-a-stronger-us-weather-enterprise/)

[2] [https://www.aip.org/fyi/2019/noaa-warns-5g-spectrum-
interfer...](https://www.aip.org/fyi/2019/noaa-warns-5g-spectrum-interference-
presents-major-threat-weather-forecasts)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Nobody suggests scrapping 5G.

Neither am I! I am suggesting (and advocating) that we slow down so that these
concerns can be taken seriously. Quoting from The Verge again:

> How did the wireless industry respond to [meteorological concerns]? By
> writing a blog post accusing meteorologists from across three government
> agencies of “risking our 5G leadership.” The implication, of course, is that
> worrying about detecting major weather events could make us lose the race.

------
Spooky23
This is a shitty issue, because you have the uncertainty of health claims,
with extreme claims that may even be ginned up to discredit opposition.

My beef with 5G is the arguments for these disruptive rollouts are almost
entirely bullshit. The United States is not in a race to drop a telephone pole
with a short range antenna in front of my home.

In the name of national security, Verizon and AT&T essentially get to do
whatever they want, with no third party input. The FCC mandates lower rates
for pole rent and allows new poles to be placed anywhere. In my case, Verizon
put a pole in my neighbors lawn about 12 feet from an existing pole.

Why does Verizon get a government subsidized ability to roll out
infrastructure? Why doesn’t Spectrum or Comcast get it for their fiber and
coax plant?

~~~
pas
Any pending suits against this FCC decision? Or against Verizon for that
unnecessary pole placement?

------
renaudg
Really surprised to see the beating heart of tech that is HN turn into a
luddite forum on this occasion.

Last week I got upgraded from 4G to 5G for home broadband here in London, UK.
It just became commercially available in my area (on Three)

As I said in another comment, my average speeds went up from 5-10Mbps to
150-250Mbps and peak ones from 20-25Mbps to 350-400Mbps.

It absolutely is the game changer it's advertised to be in terms of enabling
new real-world use cases.

Remember how video streaming was theoretically possible on 3G but totally shit
in practice until 4G came along ? 5G is a similar kind of step up. You can
expect an order magnitude more bandwidth on mobile than with 4G, and that
matters.

In other words : the hype is real.

~~~
manmal
My 4G connection in Austria has been able to do 120Mbps for years now,
sometimes even 180Mbps. What you are seeing might simply be that you are
mostly alone in your cell, and not really 5G related. Once more people have a
5G modem, things will get worse for you again.

~~~
creato
By design, 5G uses many more and smaller antennas, so it solves exactly the
problem you are pointing at.

------
rayiner
It’s very weird to see so many tech people siding with NIMBYs and
hypochondriacs against technological advance.

This is just a microcosm if a larger problem: municipal governments hold back
progress. Right now, my Maryland county is lobbying to get veto power over a
much-needed expansion of bridge capacity between the western and eastern
shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Folks are also lobbying hard to shut down
already-built light rail stations in the county. Municipalities make it
impossible to densify urban areas, demolish obsolete buildings, build transit,
build fiber, etc. Remember when San Francisco used to stop fiber deployment
because some people thought the fiber cabinets were ugly? 5G is just the
latest in a long list of things where a minority of loud voices holds up
progress for everyone.

Technologists are jealous of why places like Japan have such great
infrastructure. They do because they don’t give local interests veto power
over infrastructure. They don’t let environmental and historical preservation
laws turn every attempt at infrastructure development into years to decades of
litigation. Tokyo is criss-crossed with spiderwebs of fiber on utility poles.
They don’t hold that up because some NIMBYs complained about the view. That’s
how you make progress.

~~~
artursapek
I can't stand the term "NIMBY's". What does that really mean? Is "NIMBYism"
actually that surprising? When someone settles down somewhere and invests in a
home, they will complain if you come in and try to do something to worsen
their environment. What else can you expect? Is being a NIMBY just the
opposite of being a pushover?

~~~
jnordwick
Investing in a particular plot of land doesn't mean you get to veto everybody
else's choices of what they do with their invested plot of land. Pure
democracy violates individual freedoms.

You do you, and I'll do me.

~~~
artursapek
Usually when someone invests in a plot of land, they're also considering what
surrounds their plot of land. Obviously you don't own the rights to the
surroundings, but it's reasonable to expect you would have something to say
about it if those surroundings were to get ruined somehow.

~~~
harryh
Everything hinges on the definition of "ruined."

If you take that to mean "a waste disposal plant gets built right next to your
house" then you have a point.

If you take that to mean "we're replacing this single family home with a small
apartment building" then you're really going too far.

------
DenisM
I remember the abundant “cell phones cause cancer” and “WiFi is like a
microwave” scares 20 years ago, they all ended when people got their hands on
nice and shiny touchscreen smartphones.

~~~
kube-system
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 awful job of explaining them.

~~~
DenisM
By that logic a needle is a sword, a candle is a forest fire, and a cat is a
lion. I question the value of drawing commonalities if this kind.

~~~
asdff
Kinda. It would be like if all you knew of cats were vicious lions, then one
day a house cat came about and a journalist correctly called it a cat. Is your
perspective wrong or baseless? Absolutely not, in this world most cats are
lions and can rip your face off. Your perspective just hasn't expanded yet to
include the docile cat, so of course you react in fear.

You aren't at fault, neither is the person telling you that both lions and
house cats are both cats. Over time, these early misunderstandings iron
themselves out, and everyone sees a lion for a lion and a domestic cat for a
domestic cat. Ignore the early public recoil from any new concept, it's not
worth fretting over.

------
zw123456
One thing that a lot of people do not understand is that 5G can operate in any
frequency band. In fact, for many 4G radios it is nothing more than a software
upgrade, no change to the physical device or power levels, just faster and
lower throughput.

~~~
sschueller
The fact that the general public doesn't know this is a failure of the
carriers and FCC. Instead of clearly stating what the differences are and
maybe not putting everything in the 5G bucket they got greedy and thought they
could get it all.

If the high frequency set was left out of 5Gs first round no one would have
objected to the upgrade.

I find the "We need 5G so we can have real time translation and autonomous
cars" one of the dumbest arguments that can be made and it's pandering to an
uneducated public. Why do we need more speed and connectivity for those things
when we have better and better ML processors on Teslas and Google moving some
voice recognition algos directly to devices? It's a bullshit argument.

~~~
EdwardDiego
> If the high frequency set was left out of 5Gs first round no one would have
> objected to the upgrade.

There's a subset that will object to anything involving radio because it's
electro-magnetic RADIATION and RADIATION causes cancer!

~~~
mokus
Can we convince these people that sound is phononic RADIATION and they should
therefore stop talking?

------
patient_zero
The most important information in this piece is the FCC making rules favoring
the very telecoms they are supposed to be regulating. Not that anyone familiar
with this administration (or that scumbag Pai) is surprised.

~~~
superkuh
Yeah, specifically the sub-6GHz C-band that it is basically ripping out of the
hands of traditional radio media companies (ie, npr, etc) that use it for
satellite distribution of radio shows. There's been a lot of complaints from
radio people about this but the telcos have more money so they'll get it.

~~~
lostmsu
Which also makes total sense to me: I use radio maybe once a year, mobile data
once an hour.

~~~
yborg
I don't use a wheelchair at all, but I see value in having laws that mandate
accessibility. Public policy needs to be set on the basis of societal goals,
not individual impulses.

~~~
lostmsu
I fail to see how that should make a passive low-bandwidth data source prevail
over active high- under any circumstances.

------
corodra
Reality is, it's also far more expensive to install 5g. It requires more fiber
lines to run to more poles. Also, the telecom companies lobbied on state
levels the max cities can charge for renting out putting stuff on poles. Plus
trying to get cities to foot the bill. We are at the speed point of
diminishing returns, 5g being said point. It's more money for not a real
quality of life increase. I dont want my city to spend tax money on that.

~~~
nerdponx
_It 's more money for not a real quality of life increase. I dont want my city
to spend tax money on that._

This is what it comes down to for me. We have housing crises, debt crises,
infrastructure funding crises, and opiate crises all across the country. There
are real and significant returns to investment on fixing those. Let's start
there.

~~~
corodra
Agreed. Especially the opioid crisis. I think it's a "relatively easy" problem
to solve. I'm totally for tax money to go to people who truly want to get
cleaned up and put on the right path. I think that'll help a good chunk of
people with a well funded program of the drugs that help kick the cravings and
a work reentry system. Much better than having my municipality or county pay
for 5g.

------
PorterDuff
Since I don't download uncompressed 4k video anymore, I'm personally getting
practically all of the value of the internet (to me) from merely having a
cheap cable connection at home. I've never been certain who 5g or fiber is
really targeting. Amazon works fine, Netflix works fine, downloading an OS or
language tool set isn't too heinous. High data speed to a phone is
uninteresting, but YMMV. As usual, improvements become less useful on the
margin.

The one use case I've run into might be robot cars, probably lower
latency/higher bandwidth. I don't know enough about where the intelligence
actually lives or how much in the way of inter-car communications is actually
required though.

~~~
nitrogen
Faster upload speeds enable new applications -- easier high res streaming,
self-hosted storage (stream from home to your phone regardless of whether what
you want is on a commercial streaming platform), just plain less waiting when
creating and uploading creative work

~~~
richrichardsson
Faster upload speeds is something that I wish was more prevalent. Most ISPs
that I have experience of prioritise download speeds over upload, but for my
use case there is a point where increased download speed doesn't give me any
measurable benefit, but being able to upload at a decent rate would be a huge
benefit.

------
didibus
Can someone with know how tell me if 5G is actually good tech? I feel like
carriers just wanted to launch a new product called 5G, and just threw
together some not that great tech behind it.

Is 5G actually innovative? Are we talking order of magnitude improvements over
4G?

Cause right now all I hear is that 5G achieves faster speeds and added
throughput by simply putting more towers and access points around. That
doesn't sound like innovative engineering. At that point, just wire fiber
everywhere and create a giant Wifi mesh network with an access point at every
house. Like that would give faster internet, but not very innovative.

Normally a good innovative tech would cost less, take up less resources, and
achieve higher speeds and throughput. I'm not sure 5G is that from what I
heard.

EDIT: Even if you downvote, I am asking a question that I'm interested in
hearing answers for, so please still try and answer my questions. Thank you.

~~~
proverbialbunny
>Is 5G actually innovative? Are we talking order of magnitude improvements
over 4G?

5G theoretically is similar to when cable modems moved from DOCSIS 2 to DOCSIS
3. Docsis 2 ran over a single channel (a single frequency range) and if that
channel filled up it could switch to another channel. Docsis 3.0 allowed
modems to bond to multiple channels at once, significantly reducing the
ability for the line to fill up, and giving people much greater speeds. This
is when average speeds in the cable modem internet world went from 12mbps to
100mbps.

In a similar vain, 5G can span the entire frequency range (up to 96ghz I
believe), so the closer someone is to a pole the higher their frequency range
can span, reducing bandwidth on lower frequencies and providing higher speeds.
Those who are far from the pole might be running 5g at the 4g frequency range,
but because that will be only a few people far enough away, the bandwidth
should be faster and more responsive, even on the 4g range.

People on this thread are saying things like, "The more people that adopt 5g
the slower it will go." but as counter intuitive as it is, the more people who
are on 5g the faster everyone's speeds will be.

All cell companies have to do is upgrade their existing 4G towers to 5G and
over time everyone gets better internet, even if no more poles are laid out.
Though, without more poles, the improvements could be mild.

------
m12k
It's my impression that the vanguard of the anti-vaxxer movement have long
since moved on to 5G as their battleground of choice. And to be fair, of all
the places they could try to incite another mindless panic, this is probably
the most harmless they could have chosen - at least this time around no
children will die from it.

~~~
api
It's a shame that so much activism is spent on nonsense and even outright
destructive nonsense. All that energy could be going toward improving things
that matter.

Of course I think maybe what we are seeing is the activist arm of what I've
heard called "conspiritainment." It's a way for people to LARP as activists at
no real inconvenience to themselves. They get to feel self righteous at no
real cost.

It also feels a bit like the domestic version of what I've heard Africans call
"white savior tourism" where people from the West go to Africa to fill their
Instagram with how they are saving the world.

Picking a real issue usually means confronting and speaking truth to power.
That often has real life consequences. Attacking windmills (even literally!
that is a thing too!) does not.

Edit: I once heard an investigative journalist and PI make this joke: "How can
you tell if a conspiracy theorist is right?" "Check for their name in a
missing persons database."

~~~
The_rationalist
What you say is logically valid, why are you being downvoted?

~~~
reallydude
> It's a shame that so much activism is spent on nonsense and even outright
> destructive nonsense. All that energy could be going toward improving things
> that matter.

I did not vote on it, but this is obvious pablem. An analysis of "why" is an
interesting question, but aiming for platitudes repeated throughout every age
in every society, is the epitome of discussion "noise".

------
tzs
Some of the fear of 5G is driven by Russia. RT has run several segments about
it. Here are some:

5G Wireless: A Dangerous 'Experiment on Humanity' [1]

Could 5G put more kids at risk for cancer? [2]

How To Survive Dangers of 5G [3]

Cancer risk? 5G wireless speeds could be dangerous [4]

‘Totally insane’: Telecomm Industry ignores 5G dangers [5]

According to the New York Times, citing a declassified U.S. intelligence
report from early 2017, RT videos on YouTube average 1 million viewers per
day, and that is the highest among news outlets. They also say that lots of
blogs and websites are picking up RTs claims and repeating them, without
mentioning where they came from.

Here's a Times story on this: "Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You. But Russia Wants
You to Think Otherwise" [6]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_f9gpg4t6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_f9gpg4t6c)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpXEyP0WMrk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpXEyP0WMrk)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO1gZhwqCvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO1gZhwqCvI)

[4]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLwuM0_MJg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLwuM0_MJg)

[5]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML7wx_5n2z8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML7wx_5n2z8)

[6] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/science/5g-phone-
safety-h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/science/5g-phone-safety-
health-russia.html)

~~~
m12k
I can't see any way Russia benefits from the 5G hysteria directly. So I wonder
if they use this as a way to screen for impressionable people in the West that
they can then later use for spreading more 'useful' misinformation?

~~~
jorblumesea
Really? You can't see how Russia benefits from sowing disinformation and
confusion about a possible next-gen technology? One that has the possibility
of adding hundreds of billions of dollars and high skilled jobs to the US
workforce?

~~~
m12k
I just finished the NYT article and it claims the move is because Russia
doesn't have a 5G play, so they try to undermine everyone else's. I guess that
might hold some credence.

~~~
jorblumesea
Even if they did have a play, they'd be smart to sow disinformation and slow
down or stop adoption of next-gen technologies, as those represent huge
economic boons and advantages to the countries that adopt them first.

Similar to 4G, the first to 5G will create companies and startups taking
advantage of the new infrastructure. As countries onboard onto 5G, these well
placed companies will out compete any native companies. This is what happened
with 4G in the US, and why US tech has dominated the space in the past decade.

Russia's goal is to weaken the West in any way it can.

------
moomin
This is what happens if a large number of people bear externalities and few
get the benefits. Unsurprisingly, people block the changes. Countries that
don’t slant the benefits directly towards the big providers don’t suffer from
these problems. You can screw people over with regulatory capture, but it’s
hard to hide that you did it.

------
vermontdevil
My next door neighborhood is filled with the stupid 5G debates. The ignorance
of some of my neighbors is breathtaking. And I live in a highly educated
neighborhood. Go figure. At least the mayor and the council is on board for 5G
rollout due to the current poor reception of 4G among some providers.

~~~
XCSme
Won't 5G have even worse reception due to the higher frequency/smaller
reception distance?

~~~
kbrosnan
With the current equipment and spectrum assigned it does have that problem.

MKBHD goes over this is a video. It is awesome if you stand right underneath a
5g site, 1-2 gbps. If you head down the road a hundred feet/30 meters the
signal drops to much closer to 4g speeds.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTUs_2hq6Y](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTUs_2hq6Y)

~~~
mchristen
Reminds me of Sprint's rollout of Wimax technology. It was awesome if you had
direct LOS with the tower and also kept your phone perfectly still.

Eventually they canned it.

------
jchw
I’m ambivalent. Cellphone internet is already faster than cable internet for
many people. Even if the 5g health risk is complete bunk, do we really need
5g?

Usually when I want internet that fast I want it at home or work. As such, I
am a bit more excited for Wifi 6.

~~~
tehlike
It might unblock new products.

Being uneducated on 5g in particular, low latency fast internet can result in
proliferation of mobile ar/ve devices, and bring internet to towns that
otherwise dont have cable/fiber wiring, etc.

There are some efforts in robotics that would have much better ux if they had
faster internet in remote places.

You can imagine stadia running on mobile on the extreme. Everything cloud
streamed.

Faster internet means when it matters you wont have to wait downloading a
large binary, even though you dont need to be utilizing it 100% of the billing
cycle.

A mobile surgery center can be operated by a world renowned md, at the comfort
of yheir home

~~~
jchw
>It might unblock new products.

>Being uneducated on 5g in particular, low latency fast internet can result in
proliferation of mobile ar/ve devices.

If these new things rely on 5g, how well will they work as soon as they move
out of range of 5g internet?

>Bring internet to towns that otherwise dont have cable/fiber wiring, etc.

>There are some efforts in robotics that would have much better ux if they had
faster internet in remote places.

But wait. Doesn't 5g have more limited range than previous wireless
generations? It seems existing LTE towers would be a better solution if you
just wanted to cover the earth in high speed internet.

~~~
ripdog
>If these new things rely on 5g, how well will they work as soon as they move
out of range of 5g internet?

That's... true for all network-based technologies. Electricity is great, but
if you don't have a grid connection, battery or means of generating it... you
can't use it.

>But wait. Doesn't 5g have more limited range than previous wireless
generations? It seems existing LTE towers would be a better solution if you
just wanted to cover the earth in high speed internet.

5g includes a high-frequency version which is extremely high-throughput but
short range and murdered by walls. There is a lower-throughput version at a
much lower frequency which has solid range comparable with low-frequency 4g.

------
supertrope
5G is both a buzzword and moral panic. This is hilarious.

------
jorblumesea
One of the most important points that is missed about 5g is what 4G did for
us. It's pretty clear that the widespread adoption of faster mobile
technologies has enabled technology companies like Facebook, Google, Youtube,
Netflix etc to thrive. Investment in infrastructure has unforseen benefits
that only seem obvious in hindsight.

What will 5G bring us? Who knows. But if the past is any indication, it will
benefit American companies if we invest in it. If not, all of that growth will
go to China instead.

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smkellat
My city is looking at a total 5G ban. A city charter re-write is going to be
needed to topple the current municipal administration. Moving to non-partisan
elections would probably help since some of the current city council
incumbents either didn’t graduate high school or only graduated high school
over 50 years ago. Party structures protected those incumbents with this
literally disconnected population.

~~~
tracer4201
What city is this and what are their justifications for the ban?

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MrVitaliy
This feels a lot like the battle of Blue-ray vs HD-dvd back in the early
2000s. While Blue-ray did win, it was less relevant to the industry than the
original CD format. Things just moved online, flash storage and everyone got
high-speed internet. If public WiFi becomes more ubiquitous, especially in
densely populated areas, 4G vs 5G will be just as irrelevant as the battles
for next CD format.

~~~
renaudg
Handover on public WiFi is generally horrible, the tech is simply not designed
for that kind of use. I spend half of the day with WiFi turned off on my
iPhone because it catches weak nearby signals even when they're simply not
strong enough to work. iOS has "WiFi assist" which is supposed to be smart
about that and fall back to a cell connection, but that simply never works in
my experience.

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Nasrudith
The whole "aesthetics" thing against new technology always struck me as
bizzare and selective given all of the far uglier things already in place that
they actively like.

It seems to be the Oscar Wilde practically satirical "Anything which is of
practical use is ugly and anything which isn't is beautiful".

~~~
mooselumps
I don’t disagree with your sentiment but the 5G modem pictured on a pole in
Atlanta looked like a mess with lots of exposed wires. I’ve never seen
anything like that outside of a messy set up in a home office.

I’m fairly certain that the carriers could fit the antennas and wiring into a
more clean looking packages to put on poles.

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achievingApathy
Isn't this also a facet of our "war" with the rest of the world to be at the
forefront of technology? There are those that think ceding being the first in
things like AI would be so detrimental to the US economy that we'd never
recover.

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ranrotx
I have this feeling that 5G is more about cheaply deploying faster Internet
(ie. comment about these things going up next to people’s bedrooms) versus a
more expensive fiber deployment to the premises.

Having driven around Dallas and seen a few of these things in residential
areas, I can say that yes they are ugly. Unlike a regular cell site, it
doesn’t appear that there is any kind of permitting process around these
deployments as they just pop up suddenly.

I’m all for progress, but there are ways to make utility infrastructure less
noticeable to the urban landscape. Unfortunately with the approach I’m seeing
with 5G deployments, the telecom companies will take the cheap way out.

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dane-pgp
Imagine you are the leader of a country with a large military budget, strong
central control over domestic media and policy, but little influence over
global technical standards or device manufacturing.

Game theoretically, it would seem that a tempting strategy would be to spend
money on influencing the debate in other countries to make them mistrustful of
new technology, to slow their economy and relative growth. If the influence
campaign isn't completely successful, then you get the additional benefit of
having the populace divided amongst itself, and not trusting its own
institutions, which further weakens their ability to work together and project
power internationally.

Surprisingly, this strategy also works against old technology too. Imagine if
you wanted to cause health crises in other countries by convincing enough of
the population to be afraid of vaccines that herd immunity is lost. I know
this sounds like its own conspiracy theory, but it would explain a lot about
some of the weird fringe views that seem to be popular on the internet right
now.

~~~
reggieband
I know you're getting downvoted for this controversial insinuation ... but I
must admit my mind went there while I was reading these comments. The amount
of FUD in this comment section, especially at the top, is almost suspicious.

I get it that 5G doesn't exactly match the hype, that the cost of rollout is
high, alternatives like improving 4G coverage and back-haul from towers are
available, there are hints of problems with saturating the air in such high-
powered/high-spectrum radiation etc. But how a group of supposedly tech savvy,
future thinking, entrepreneurial types seem single-mindedly focused on the
negative aspects of a technology seems to not match the normal crowd on hacker
news.

5G isn't revolutionary but it is the exact kind of incremental improvement I
expect to see in tech. It has some benefits (higher speeds, lower latency) and
some drawbacks (proximity to towers, interference from large objects, cost to
rollout). The discussion here seems to be entirely limited to maximizing the
drawbacks and to limiting the benefits.

In my experience with tech, increasing speed and decreasing latency has always
netted noticeable benefits. From CPUs, GPUs, memory access and network access
- even small improvements in speed/latency have enabled major improvements in
features. In addition, rolling out 5G is going to force the rollout of
infrastructure enabling 5G, e.g. the fibre lines needed to supply all of those
new base stations. For those reasons I am excited about 5G.

~~~
nerdponx
That's not what the top comments are saying, though. They're all saying "5G is
overhyped and not worth the investment".

~~~
reggieband
The first sentence of my second paragraph is literally: "I get it that 5G
doesn't exactly match the hype, that the cost of rollout is high, ..."

And the "5G overhyped, too expensive, not worth it" meme is what I am talking
about as being suspicious. It's curious, the last time I commented on this
very issue the responses were all that same meme. One can say "I hear the meme
but have an alternative opinion" and the response is always "yes, but _meme_
". When several voices are parroting a meme and somehow that saturates almost
all of the top comments ... I get suspicious.

~~~
nerdponx
I mean, I haven't been paid off by anyone but that's exactly how I feel about
it too. HN has a lot of memes -- you probably just agree with most of them and
don't notice.

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DiseasedBadger
I have heard suggestions, that the drive for 5g is to increases the density of
wifi signals, since the technology developed for airport scanners can
passively image people in areas of high wifi-signal density.

------
tunesmith
Regarding the health impact of cellular transmission, has anyone noticed that
even the google search results for this are a total trash heap? I have a
friend that turns off bluetooth transmission for all his devices every night,
uses only a wired headphone for his phone, and even unplugs his wifi router
every night. He's someone that doesn't know the difference between ionizing
and non-ionizing radiation. I was tempted to make fun of him for all of this,
but after searching on google and seeing what came up, I can't really blame
him.

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supernova87a
What I want to know is whether -- as technology is supposed to -- 5G will
bring me cheaper and faster cellular internet for all its hype.

No? I'm just going to burn through my data faster, and pay more to the
carrier? Why am I interested then?

Isn't more access and more affordable prices the goal of the FCC as well? Why
do many other countries have so much better and reasonably priced data?

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stjohnswarts
It's just faster internet. They may have something with "aesthetics" but that
smells of NIMBYism which is driven by rich locals when 75% of the populace has
no problem with it. There are no health risks either, that is just the
imagination of people who follow Alex Jones or who believe in crystal energy.
The FCC needs to bully them.

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Rustty2
I've been reading by through comments and I see only one mention of hazard to
physical and/or mental health. That one mention is "EM bullshit". Could I
kindly ask for anyone to point me to a site/s that make you believe there is
no potential harm to humans from 5G? Thank you in advance :)

------
amluto
I find the argument that 5G is at all unsafe on a pole to be a bit silly. I
think there are a couple of much more serious issues:

1\. Is a millimeter-wave transmitter _in a phone_ safe? The power output is
moderately high, and these wavelengths are absorbed near the surface of your
skin _or your cornea_. Cellphones are held near faces all the time. So I’d be
much more concerned about using a 5G phone than about living near a 5G tower.

2\. The 5G wavelengths May interfere with weather radar. I think that good
weather forecasts are generally more important than cat videos.

~~~
stefan_
No one is even putting millimeter-wave transmitters in phones right now.

But the more obvious point is that millimeter-wave 5G can only work with
beamforming, and a beam that is going through your head where it is fully,
entirely, fucking completely absorbed not a millimeter in, well, that's not
going to yield a lot of throughput.

~~~
sipjca
Um... Yes they are. The Galaxy S10 5G has a mmW radio in it that’s transmits
mmW waves for the uplink. The 5G spec also requires certain protection when
the UE (phone) Tx wave might go through tissue. But you’re correct that it
doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to attempt to Tx/Rx on a beam pointed at
your head since it will lead to drastically lower SNR

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dubliner2077
Drop my mind monthly bill and fuck 5g, I have all the speed I need and more
than 64k RAM for my Phone.

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coliveira
5G represents the end of the oligopoly maintained by Comcast and Verizon.
There is a lot on stake for these giant companies, and the fight will be ugly.
Chinese companies have a clear advantage in developing this technology because
they have a huge country with new networks developing, free from the
constraints of an established oligopoly.

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microcolonel
I still have no idea what practical application makes use of 5G.

~~~
XCSme
Playing the Chrome dino game as the connection will drop more frequently due
to the smaller wavelength.

~~~
ripdog
5g has a low-frequency version which has comparable range and wall penetration
to 4g.

