
The Debate Over Neighborhood Zoning Could Hold Up Fast 5G Wireless for Years - hourislate
https://www.fastcompany.com/40468468/the-debate-over-neighborhood-zoning-could-hold-up-fast-5g-wireless-for-years-to-come
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the_evacuator
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.

~~~
rdiddly
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.

~~~
adrianratnapala
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.

~~~
rdiddly
"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.

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superkuh
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.

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

~~~
superkuh
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.

~~~
fourthark
So... back to Ethernet?

~~~
Fjolsvith
NIMBY!

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sandworm101
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.

~~~
Yumz-
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?

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

~~~
rayiner
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.

~~~
mattrices
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.

~~~
rayiner
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.

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jwilliams
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...](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/10/31/san-francisco-residents-
battle-wireless-companies-cell-tower-building-boom-super-bowl-fifty/) (warning
- several annoying autoplay videos).

Update: just walked past one
[https://photos.app.goo.gl/I8MWfox0eB6G7ztD2](https://photos.app.goo.gl/I8MWfox0eB6G7ztD2)

~~~
marak830
Huh thanks for the photo. You're not wrong about it blending in well.

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kibwen
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?

~~~
bmc7505
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.

~~~
j_s
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...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2017/01/11/these-cellphone-carriers-are-about-to-make-life-harder-
for-grandfathered-unlimited-data-users/)

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.

~~~
throwaway613834
> 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.

~~~
bmc7505
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.

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Aloha
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.

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kevinburke
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?

~~~
engined
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.

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

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

~~~
wonderous
That domain is expired:
[http://whois.domaintools.com/docketdaily.com](http://whois.domaintools.com/docketdaily.com)

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edwhitesell
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.

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

