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The Debate Over Neighborhood Zoning Could Hold Up Fast 5G Wireless for Years
- kevinburke 9y agoIt 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 9y agoThis 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.
- codingdave 9y agoYou 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.
- sandworm101 9y agoI'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.
- microcolonel 9y agoFor 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.
- wolfgke 9y agoThe 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.
- necessity 9y ago>it takes a year to approve a cell that can be installed in an hour. Permit fees run to thousands of dollars per cell, and cells often require permits not only from cities but from Native American tribal authorities—even for locations far from tribal lands And I thought we had it bad in Brazil...
- jwilliams 9y agoThese 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-residents-battle-wireless-companies-cell-tower-building-boom-super-bowl-fifty/ 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 https://photos.app.goo.gl/I8MWfox0eB6G7ztD2
- kibwen 9y agoI 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?
- rootsudo 9y agoWhen 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.
- kayoone 9y agoI 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.
- Yumz- 9y agoThis 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.
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- luckman212 9y agoReally? 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.
- codecamper 9y agoVerizon bought Straight Path for some billions so you are going to get 5g no matter if you like it or not.
- the_evacuator 9y agoMy 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.
- Severian 9y agoI 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.
- tzs 9y agoThere 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 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21457072 [2] https://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-chemist-jacqueline-barton-honored-national-medal-science-1723 https://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-chemist-jacqueline-bart...
- edwhitesell 9y agoI 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.
- superkuh 9y agoThe 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 9y agoSo, no change then? Since those "home wifi" connections come through a centrally owned comms network.
- superkuh 9y agoIt'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.
- msh 9y agounlicensed LTE is not needed for 5G, its actually a 4G technology. You can have 5G without using unlicensed spectrum.
- Aloha 9y agoTrue 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.