5 ms·

Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

91 points by okket 8y ago

kevin_b_er 8y ago
This is how you stand for profit over people.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  That has been FCC policy for 84 years. They have always helped out the monopolists. Even when the commission temporarily pretended (never for more than a year or two) to care about the public interest, the agency itself was still firmly in the pocket of Ma Bell and her daughters. Under Trump they don't have to pretend.
post_break 8y ago
I'm kind of torn on this because I can see both sides of it. Some cities charge an insane amount to license a pole, others charge less. Should a small town be able to charge a $50,000 per year rent to put up a cell tower? Doesn't seem right, but in a densely packed city where space is tight maybe it makes sense to stop companies from dumping infrastructure. Then there are the time deadlines. Every worked with government that doesn't have a time deadline? For instance ever applied for a permit that has no final issue deadline? They can sit on it for a decade and you can't do anything about it. I don't agree with the FCC, but I also don't think cities should be able to stifle the industry. I don't think there is a great solution on either side.
- bcgraham 8y ago
  > Should a small town be able to charge a $50,000 per year rent to put up a cell tower? Yes, absolutely! > I don't think cities should be able to stifle the industry. Portland, OR couldn't stifle the industry if it wanted to. Besides that, city governments don't answer to the industry; they answer to their voters.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    > Besides that, city governments don't answer to the industry; they answer to their voters. Do you find your city government to be very responsive to your desires? Maybe it actually is in small towns, but in larger cities, the government basically does whatever it wants on niche issues like this, with no real oversight.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      If pole fees were high enough that wireless carriers decided not to serve particular areas, such a decision would lead the local nightly news, because wireless company PR is powerful. Voters would be pissed, and the fees would drop.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      > Do you find your city government to be very responsive to your desires? Yes, but only because I hold them accountable with FOIA requests and constant generation of a paper/documentation trail.
danggg 8y ago
This is how you stand for profit over people.
joshstrange 8y ago
I went into this expecting to side 100% with the cities but after reading it I'm divided. I completely understand wanting to cut through some of the government bureaucracy and impose limits on time and cost of putting up these devices but at the same time then umber feel rather low. That said it seems very wasteful that our 2-3 phone carriers are all going to be putting up new equipment, I'm not sure if there is any law/rule/agreement about them sharing but it seems stupid to have a 5G modem for T-mobile, AT&T, Verizon all on the same pole incurring the same maintenance and cost.
- maxsilver 8y ago
  It's not quite as wasteful as it might seem. Even if there was just one national carrier that owned all of T-Mobile/AT&T/Verizon, they'd still need close to the current amount of RRUs + gear + backhaul, to support the same number of total users on all of the various spectrum bands being used. There would be some maintenance/cost savings. But not a huge night-and-day difference. -- For what it's worth, Portland charges $250/month for a point of presence (from the article). I'm no cellular expert, but from my WISP days, that's the cheapest rate I've ever heard of for a such a thing, short of donations on farms and windmills and the like. Similar rent on a cell tower would cost $1,000 to $3,000+/month. I'm totally open to the idea that cities could be overcharging for utility pole access -- that a few cities abuse the hell out of this authority and that this should be corrected. But the FCC's rule forces Portland to drop the rent from $250/month to just $22/month. At this extremely low price point, I suspect the city of Portland would actually be subsidizing the majority of these site costs for cellular providers, at the expense of their city's budget. For comparison, it costs something like $2k to $3k just to build or replace a single pole (in cheap low-CoL suburban areas, using cheap wood non-metal poles). At $22/month, if a pole was used by Verizon alone, a city wouldn't break even on the cheapest possible initial pole costs for about 10 years (and that's assuming it never needs maintenance or repair or temporary movement ever). If cities lose this fight, I would expect them to raise their income taxes and/or property taxes to cover the money the FCC is making them give cellular telecoms.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Why are cities owning a pole used just by one company though? The only reason for a city to own the poles is so "everyone" can use them - electric, cable tv, telephone... The combined rent from them all should pay for the pole, not the rent from one. I don't know what a fair rent is though.
stefan_ 8y ago
This seems like a perfectly reasonable policy. The fear mongering by the cities how the power grid will collapse if they can't charge large fees and delay as they see fit.. not convincing. Giving cities control over this is just a NIMBY dream.
- devhead 8y ago
  I think it's up to the city, it's their pole. The federal government is coming in and saying there's a new price per pole and giving that discount to the ISP's, when will the people get their discount? how about we barter, we'll give a smaller range (a fixed rate really isn't a good reality) and then the ISP's have to disband their lobbying efforts for ten years. Also they need to undo each state and local law they had put in place to prevent city and states from creating their own local ISP service. Oh, and Pai has to quit and be banned from working at any ISP for at least two decades. i'll be here waiting with my full support to these terms.
ohithereyou 8y ago
I am stunned that the FCC is not conditioning the receipt of this money with targets (phased giveaway where completion of one task triggers the next payment) and agreement by the mobile carriers to have their rate plans regulated until this money is repaid. If you're going to use government money paid to private corporations to do this then the private corporations should pay the government back out of the regulated rates. After that, the infrastructure is paid for, and so long as it's available under the same terms to others, go nuts.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- NegativeLatency 8y ago
  Sadly I'm becoming less and less stunned by blatant corruption in the US. If the cable internet market was more fair (limited providers, high rates in many areas) I'd have more hope.
- harryh 8y ago
  This comment makes no sense. There is no discussion here of money being paid from governments to wireless carriers. Did you read the article?
blaisio 8y ago
At first I was torn on this issue, but then I realized that really it makes no sense for the FCC to be telling cities what they're allowed to charge for this. It is sort of like the federal government preventing a city from charging taxes. This doesn't seem like an interstate issue so it doesn't seem like the federal government should be able to regulate it.
hcurtiss 8y ago
The headline is terribly misleading. There's a good argument that localities are preventing competition in the broadband space with these fees. Here's a good Wired article from back in 2013: https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/ https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju...
- specialist 8y ago
  Berin Szóka, Matthew Starr, Jon Henke -- the authors of that opinion piece -- also oppose net neutrality. Their "think tank" organization TechFreedom is funded by the wireless industry and the Koch brothers. TechFreedom has also been (still is?) a member of ALEC. Jon Henke is a Republican political consultant and self-described "neo-libertarian". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke https://twitter.com/BerinSzoka https://twitter.com/BerinSzoka
  - hcurtiss 8y ago
    So, do you have any thoughts on the substance?
    - stonogo 8y ago
      Sure: the regulation in question removes the cities' ability to oversee the installation of the hardware. Currently, microcell installation in many places requires a city engineer to sign off on the mechanical part -- can the pole support this load, is the mount going to stand up to stormwinds, and so forth. The FCC edict turns it into a free-for-all: this is irresponsible.
      - hcurtiss 8y ago
        Sure they can. They just can’t charge $10,000 for that work. It’s not like every power pole is a unique snowflake.
joebubna 8y ago
Am I the only one concerned that they are rolling this tech out without further study? To quote the IEEE: "Millimeter waves are broadcast at frequencies between 30 and 300 gigahertz, compared to the bands below 6 GHz that were used for mobile devices in the past." In 2011 the WHO (World Health Organization) panel of scientists decided to label Cell Phones as possibly cancer causing after a review of the available studies: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.h... This past year the department within the US government responsible for studying toxic effects released a preliminary report showing an increase in brain and heart cancer rates within male mice exposed to 2G and 3G wireless radiation: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.html https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.htm... That's not to mention the personal stories of cell-phone induced brain cancers that have been circulating since the 80s. For instance: my brother-in-law's dad died of brain cancer, and he was a business man who was on his cell phone almost 24/7. Exposing the majority of the US population to higher frequency waves than the ones already under suspicion of causing cancer seems like a bad call without further study.
- harryh 8y ago
  https://xkcd.com/925/ https://xkcd.com/925/
- gshulegaard 8y ago
  I seem to see comments regarding cell phone use / cell frequency and cancer risks fairly regularly now. So as I usually do, here is an NIH fact sheet with great references (for you as well as others): https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r... Generally, there does not seem to be strong scientific evidence supporting a causal relationship between non-ionizing radiation exposure and increased cancer rates at ordinary levels. I did find your linked study (https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.html https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.htm...) interesting but wanted to point out a few things: 1) These mice were subjected to whole body exposure for their entire lives (from utero to old age) 18.5 hours a day (9 hours of actual sustained exposure) which seems to be of questionable relevance to real-world human conditions. From one of the reviewers: "There may be also several caveats relating to “under the conditions of these studies”, including how well the conditions recapitulate actual human exposure: whole body exposure from in utero to old age; 18.5 hours/day (10 min on/10 min off, for total of 9hr actual exposure); and dose;" 2) Only male mice in the sample demonstrated statistically significant differences from the control group, female mice did not. This is odd...and the reviewers take note: "My concern regarding the control data came from the following two considerations. First, we need to consider sample variation. The incidence rates of the current controls for brain gliomas and heart schwannomas were 0. However, the historical controls were 1.67% for gliomas (range 0-‐8%) and 1.30% for schwannomas (0-‐6%). Given that there were substantial variations among the historical controls and the concurrent control is at the lowest end of the range, it is important to evaluate how different estimates of control incidence rates may impact the results of analyses. ... Second, it is puzzling why the control had short survival rate. Given that most of the gliomas and heart schwannomas are late-‐developing tumors, it is possible that if the controls were living longer some tumors might develop." That is to say the male control group didn't have any tumors develop but they also lived for shorter period of time than the the other groups (ostensibly also the female control). This is odd and explains a possible false-positive scenario where a short lived control group had a 0% expression of tumors naturally because they didn't live long enough for the tumors to develop. Still an interesting result, but also a good illustration of why science places emphasis on reproducible results. 3) Implied/mentioned by #2, but there were no statistical variations between the female control group and the radiated female group. Perhaps female mice are resistant...or perhaps the male control was a non-representative sample. Either way this difference raises questions and the possibility of a false-positive. So at the end of reading, I find this reviewer's summary to be most relatable: "Looking at the data, I agree with the report’s conclusion: Under the conditions of these studies, the hyperplastic lesions and neoplasms observed in male rats are considered likely the result of exposures to GSM- and CDMA- modulated RFR. The findings in the heart were statistically stronger than the findings in the brain. But note, it is “considered likely” not “definitely is”...Results from the companion mouse study will hopefully add some insight." The keys being "Under the conditions of these studies" which may not be relatable to real-world human exposure as well as " “considered likely” not “definitely is” ". So to your point: > Exposing the majority of the US population to higher frequency waves than the ones already under suspicion of causing cancer seems like a bad call without further study. There is ongoing research and study...some dating back to the early-mid 2000's...and so far there hasn't been sufficient evidence to show (or suggest) a causal link between non-ionizing radiation and cancer risk. At least that is my layman's understanding.
rayiner 8y ago
This article is off the reservation. 5G is the best hope for actual competition in broadband. By dramatically decreasing deployment costs (compared to wireline), it will enable several competing providers in places that have de facto monopolies today. Putting up red tape is not the way to go about fostering competition. There are differing views on the appropriate level of regulation for uncompetitive markets and natural monopolies. But almost nobody sane would prefer a regulated market to an actually competitive one. Deregulation of industries like trucking, air freight, and airlines, where there are several competing providers, has proven to be a massively positive thing compared to how things were in the 1930s-1960s. 5G offers that possibility here--the possibility to abandon hairy questions about how to regulate because competitive obviates the need to regulate. Opposing that is madness.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Which competitors are these? Someone besides the "big 4"? (actually more like 2.75...) Now that fees may no longer be used to gauge the relative value of pole access to different firms, what will determine which firms are allowed to use them?
  - rayiner 8y ago
    I also strongly suspect Comcast and Google will get into it as well. That would be consistent with Google’s shift from fiber to wireless, and Comcast’s dipping its toes into the wifi/mvno waters. Most major industries have less competition than the “Big 4.” For mobile OSs, there is just two real options. Same for desktop OSes. For search engines, maybe three. Soft drinks two. The question isn’t how many does it take for optimal competition, but how many companies does it take to beat a government-regulated industry? The answer is probably two, maybe even one. (It’s a good thing the government never regulated Microsoft.) Pole access fees were never used to determine the relative value of access to different firms. The Communications Act requires pole access fees to be non-discriminatory. Everyone pays rates according to a schedule. Which is a good thing, because local governments have no competence to pick among providers. That’s the pre-1994 behavior that led to de facto regional monopolies today.

91 points by okket 8y ago

kevin_b_er 8y ago

This is how you stand for profit over people.

jessaustin 8y ago
That has been FCC policy for 84 years. They have always helped out the monopolists. Even when the commission temporarily pretended (never for more than a year or two) to care about the public interest, the agency itself was still firmly in the pocket of Ma Bell and her daughters. Under Trump they don't have to pretend.

post_break 8y ago

I'm kind of torn on this because I can see both sides of it. Some cities charge an insane amount to license a pole, others charge less. Should a small town be able to charge a $50,000 per year rent to put up a cell tower? Doesn't seem right, but in a densely packed city where space is tight maybe it makes sense to stop companies from dumping infrastructure. Then there are the time deadlines. Every worked with government that doesn't have a time deadline? For instance ever applied for a permit that has no final issue deadline? They can sit on it for a decade and you can't do anything about it. I don't agree with the FCC, but I also don't think cities should be able to stifle the industry. I don't think there is a great solution on either side.

bcgraham 8y ago
> Should a small town be able to charge a $50,000 per year rent to put up a cell tower? Yes, absolutely! > I don't think cities should be able to stifle the industry. Portland, OR couldn't stifle the industry if it wanted to. Besides that, city governments don't answer to the industry; they answer to their voters.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  > Besides that, city governments don't answer to the industry; they answer to their voters. Do you find your city government to be very responsive to your desires? Maybe it actually is in small towns, but in larger cities, the government basically does whatever it wants on niche issues like this, with no real oversight.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    If pole fees were high enough that wireless carriers decided not to serve particular areas, such a decision would lead the local nightly news, because wireless company PR is powerful. Voters would be pissed, and the fees would drop.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    > Do you find your city government to be very responsive to your desires? Yes, but only because I hold them accountable with FOIA requests and constant generation of a paper/documentation trail.

danggg 8y ago

This is how you stand for profit over people.

joshstrange 8y ago

I went into this expecting to side 100% with the cities but after reading it I'm divided. I completely understand wanting to cut through some of the government bureaucracy and impose limits on time and cost of putting up these devices but at the same time then umber feel rather low. That said it seems very wasteful that our 2-3 phone carriers are all going to be putting up new equipment, I'm not sure if there is any law/rule/agreement about them sharing but it seems stupid to have a 5G modem for T-mobile, AT&T, Verizon all on the same pole incurring the same maintenance and cost.

maxsilver 8y ago
It's not quite as wasteful as it might seem. Even if there was just one national carrier that owned all of T-Mobile/AT&T/Verizon, they'd still need close to the current amount of RRUs + gear + backhaul, to support the same number of total users on all of the various spectrum bands being used. There would be some maintenance/cost savings. But not a huge night-and-day difference. -- For what it's worth, Portland charges $250/month for a point of presence (from the article). I'm no cellular expert, but from my WISP days, that's the cheapest rate I've ever heard of for a such a thing, short of donations on farms and windmills and the like. Similar rent on a cell tower would cost $1,000 to $3,000+/month. I'm totally open to the idea that cities could be overcharging for utility pole access -- that a few cities abuse the hell out of this authority and that this should be corrected. But the FCC's rule forces Portland to drop the rent from $250/month to just $22/month. At this extremely low price point, I suspect the city of Portland would actually be subsidizing the majority of these site costs for cellular providers, at the expense of their city's budget. For comparison, it costs something like $2k to $3k just to build or replace a single pole (in cheap low-CoL suburban areas, using cheap wood non-metal poles). At $22/month, if a pole was used by Verizon alone, a city wouldn't break even on the cheapest possible initial pole costs for about 10 years (and that's assuming it never needs maintenance or repair or temporary movement ever). If cities lose this fight, I would expect them to raise their income taxes and/or property taxes to cover the money the FCC is making them give cellular telecoms.
- bluGill 8y ago
  Why are cities owning a pole used just by one company though? The only reason for a city to own the poles is so "everyone" can use them - electric, cable tv, telephone... The combined rent from them all should pay for the pole, not the rent from one. I don't know what a fair rent is though.

stefan_ 8y ago

This seems like a perfectly reasonable policy. The fear mongering by the cities how the power grid will collapse if they can't charge large fees and delay as they see fit.. not convincing. Giving cities control over this is just a NIMBY dream.

devhead 8y ago
I think it's up to the city, it's their pole. The federal government is coming in and saying there's a new price per pole and giving that discount to the ISP's, when will the people get their discount? how about we barter, we'll give a smaller range (a fixed rate really isn't a good reality) and then the ISP's have to disband their lobbying efforts for ten years. Also they need to undo each state and local law they had put in place to prevent city and states from creating their own local ISP service. Oh, and Pai has to quit and be banned from working at any ISP for at least two decades. i'll be here waiting with my full support to these terms.

ohithereyou 8y ago

I am stunned that the FCC is not conditioning the receipt of this money with targets (phased giveaway where completion of one task triggers the next payment) and agreement by the mobile carriers to have their rate plans regulated until this money is repaid. If you're going to use government money paid to private corporations to do this then the private corporations should pay the government back out of the regulated rates. After that, the infrastructure is paid for, and so long as it's available under the same terms to others, go nuts.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
NegativeLatency 8y ago
Sadly I'm becoming less and less stunned by blatant corruption in the US. If the cable internet market was more fair (limited providers, high rates in many areas) I'd have more hope.
harryh 8y ago
This comment makes no sense. There is no discussion here of money being paid from governments to wireless carriers. Did you read the article?

blaisio 8y ago

At first I was torn on this issue, but then I realized that really it makes no sense for the FCC to be telling cities what they're allowed to charge for this. It is sort of like the federal government preventing a city from charging taxes. This doesn't seem like an interstate issue so it doesn't seem like the federal government should be able to regulate it.

hcurtiss 8y ago

The headline is terribly misleading. There's a good argument that localities are preventing competition in the broadband space with these fees. Here's a good Wired article from back in 2013: https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/ https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju...

specialist 8y ago
Berin Szóka, Matthew Starr, Jon Henke -- the authors of that opinion piece -- also oppose net neutrality. Their "think tank" organization TechFreedom is funded by the wireless industry and the Koch brothers. TechFreedom has also been (still is?) a member of ALEC. Jon Henke is a Republican political consultant and self-described "neo-libertarian". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke https://twitter.com/BerinSzoka https://twitter.com/BerinSzoka
- hcurtiss 8y ago
  So, do you have any thoughts on the substance?
  - stonogo 8y ago
    Sure: the regulation in question removes the cities' ability to oversee the installation of the hardware. Currently, microcell installation in many places requires a city engineer to sign off on the mechanical part -- can the pole support this load, is the mount going to stand up to stormwinds, and so forth. The FCC edict turns it into a free-for-all: this is irresponsible.
    - hcurtiss 8y ago
      Sure they can. They just can’t charge $10,000 for that work. It’s not like every power pole is a unique snowflake.

joebubna 8y ago

Am I the only one concerned that they are rolling this tech out without further study? To quote the IEEE: "Millimeter waves are broadcast at frequencies between 30 and 300 gigahertz, compared to the bands below 6 GHz that were used for mobile devices in the past." In 2011 the WHO (World Health Organization) panel of scientists decided to label Cell Phones as possibly cancer causing after a review of the available studies: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.h... This past year the department within the US government responsible for studying toxic effects released a preliminary report showing an increase in brain and heart cancer rates within male mice exposed to 2G and 3G wireless radiation: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.html https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.htm... That's not to mention the personal stories of cell-phone induced brain cancers that have been circulating since the 80s. For instance: my brother-in-law's dad died of brain cancer, and he was a business man who was on his cell phone almost 24/7. Exposing the majority of the US population to higher frequency waves than the ones already under suspicion of causing cancer seems like a bad call without further study.

harryh 8y ago
https://xkcd.com/925/ https://xkcd.com/925/
gshulegaard 8y ago
I seem to see comments regarding cell phone use / cell frequency and cancer risks fairly regularly now. So as I usually do, here is an NIH fact sheet with great references (for you as well as others): https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r... Generally, there does not seem to be strong scientific evidence supporting a causal relationship between non-ionizing radiation exposure and increased cancer rates at ordinary levels. I did find your linked study (https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.html https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.htm...) interesting but wanted to point out a few things: 1) These mice were subjected to whole body exposure for their entire lives (from utero to old age) 18.5 hours a day (9 hours of actual sustained exposure) which seems to be of questionable relevance to real-world human conditions. From one of the reviewers: "There may be also several caveats relating to “under the conditions of these studies”, including how well the conditions recapitulate actual human exposure: whole body exposure from in utero to old age; 18.5 hours/day (10 min on/10 min off, for total of 9hr actual exposure); and dose;" 2) Only male mice in the sample demonstrated statistically significant differences from the control group, female mice did not. This is odd...and the reviewers take note: "My concern regarding the control data came from the following two considerations. First, we need to consider sample variation. The incidence rates of the current controls for brain gliomas and heart schwannomas were 0. However, the historical controls were 1.67% for gliomas (range 0-‐8%) and 1.30% for schwannomas (0-‐6%). Given that there were substantial variations among the historical controls and the concurrent control is at the lowest end of the range, it is important to evaluate how different estimates of control incidence rates may impact the results of analyses. ... Second, it is puzzling why the control had short survival rate. Given that most of the gliomas and heart schwannomas are late-‐developing tumors, it is possible that if the controls were living longer some tumors might develop." That is to say the male control group didn't have any tumors develop but they also lived for shorter period of time than the the other groups (ostensibly also the female control). This is odd and explains a possible false-positive scenario where a short lived control group had a 0% expression of tumors naturally because they didn't live long enough for the tumors to develop. Still an interesting result, but also a good illustration of why science places emphasis on reproducible results. 3) Implied/mentioned by #2, but there were no statistical variations between the female control group and the radiated female group. Perhaps female mice are resistant...or perhaps the male control was a non-representative sample. Either way this difference raises questions and the possibility of a false-positive. So at the end of reading, I find this reviewer's summary to be most relatable: "Looking at the data, I agree with the report’s conclusion: Under the conditions of these studies, the hyperplastic lesions and neoplasms observed in male rats are considered likely the result of exposures to GSM- and CDMA- modulated RFR. The findings in the heart were statistically stronger than the findings in the brain. But note, it is “considered likely” not “definitely is”...Results from the companion mouse study will hopefully add some insight." The keys being "Under the conditions of these studies" which may not be relatable to real-world human exposure as well as " “considered likely” not “definitely is” ". So to your point: > Exposing the majority of the US population to higher frequency waves than the ones already under suspicion of causing cancer seems like a bad call without further study. There is ongoing research and study...some dating back to the early-mid 2000's...and so far there hasn't been sufficient evidence to show (or suggest) a causal link between non-ionizing radiation and cancer risk. At least that is my layman's understanding.

rayiner 8y ago

This article is off the reservation. 5G is the best hope for actual competition in broadband. By dramatically decreasing deployment costs (compared to wireline), it will enable several competing providers in places that have de facto monopolies today. Putting up red tape is not the way to go about fostering competition. There are differing views on the appropriate level of regulation for uncompetitive markets and natural monopolies. But almost nobody sane would prefer a regulated market to an actually competitive one. Deregulation of industries like trucking, air freight, and airlines, where there are several competing providers, has proven to be a massively positive thing compared to how things were in the 1930s-1960s. 5G offers that possibility here--the possibility to abandon hairy questions about how to regulate because competitive obviates the need to regulate. Opposing that is madness.

jessaustin 8y ago
Which competitors are these? Someone besides the "big 4"? (actually more like 2.75...) Now that fees may no longer be used to gauge the relative value of pole access to different firms, what will determine which firms are allowed to use them?
- rayiner 8y ago
  I also strongly suspect Comcast and Google will get into it as well. That would be consistent with Google’s shift from fiber to wireless, and Comcast’s dipping its toes into the wifi/mvno waters. Most major industries have less competition than the “Big 4.” For mobile OSs, there is just two real options. Same for desktop OSes. For search engines, maybe three. Soft drinks two. The question isn’t how many does it take for optimal competition, but how many companies does it take to beat a government-regulated industry? The answer is probably two, maybe even one. (It’s a good thing the government never regulated Microsoft.) Pole access fees were never used to determine the relative value of access to different firms. The Communications Act requires pole access fees to be non-discriminatory. Everyone pays rates according to a schedule. Which is a good thing, because local governments have no competence to pick among providers. That’s the pre-1994 behavior that led to de facto regional monopolies today.