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While 5G Will be a great boon, especially the beam-forming satellite version, another unintended consequence besides weather remote sensing is nuking the extrem

While 5G Will be a great boon, especially the beam-forming satellite version, another unintended consequence besides weather remote sensing is nuking the extremely important 24 GHz range (K Band) for radio astronomy. There are a few narrow protected windows for absolutely critical spectral lines, but the truth is that nature doesn't play by the spectrum allocations rules, and there are hundreds if not thousands of lines that are observed routinely outside of the protected bands. It is also remarkably free and clear of radio frequency interference (RFI), in part because industry has chosen other frequencies not attenuated by atmospheric water vapor. This isn't to say we should halt global human progress to save a local river bait fish, but that threat to forecasting is only one of the serious consequences major spectrum reallocation can have. This is especially true for passive use in the sciences, which has a weaker lobby than the private sector.

N_trglctc_joe 7y ago
> While 5G Will be a great boon This is something I've been having trouble with. Lately I've become more aware of the secondary effects of 5G- on weather forecasting, on the radio spectrum, possibly on bees- and it's got me wondering why we need it for telecom. I just don't see the value added. I can already communicate with anyone in the world, access any information, and find my way anywhere with 4G. A significantly higher rate of data transfer just doesn't seem to add any new functionality to my phone. Can anyone give me a good rationale for 5G? Entertainment doesn't count. I'll grant right-off-the-bat that it'll have some fantastic industrial applications; my issue is with personal telecom. It just feels like a new planned obsolescence vector.
- ashleyn 7y ago
  Except entertainment does count according to customer use metrics.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Does anyone feel 4G is lacking in any way? I don't think I'd notice if my phone's network was any faster.
    - NegativeLatency 7y ago
      I think it's more about power usage. Shorter bursts of more data vs having the radio on for longer.
    - thomascgalvin 7y ago
      The real issue is coverage, not highest-available speed. It doesn't matter if Verizon puts up a tower that lets you download 10GB per second if you live in an area that Verizon doesn't care about servicing.
      - veritas_veritad 7y ago
        but how/why would 5G increase coverage?
      - trophycase 7y ago
        It doesn't matter if Verizon lets you download 10G a second if the average 10G/month data plan costs hundreds
    - TrueDuality 7y ago
      The biggest thing preventing me from using 4G more has nothing to do with speed or coverage. It's the caps and pricing on bandwidth consumption. I doubt 5G is going to change that.
      - fullofstack 7y ago
        5G will increase capacity, especially in urban areas, enabling cheaper unlimited plans.
        TrueDuality 7y ago
        Looking only at capacity, it will definitely be cheaper to provide unlimited plans but even if that was the only factor, there isn't much of an incentive for carriers to change how they charge for bandwidth. In all likelihood prices will go up as 5G requires a massive infrastructure deployment of very expensive hardware, spectrum licensing, and they'll have to pay to transmit and receive that data to the internet. All of those additional costs will be passed on to customers.
  - kurthr 7y ago
    Circuses, but maybe not so much bread?
  - N_trglctc_joe 7y ago
    People can already steam music and Netflix (or whatever) and be happy with it. You don't need 4k revolution (or lossless music) on your tablet. If you cared that much about quality, you'd watch $whatever on an actual monitor (which, given our technology, is EITHER easily mobile OR better in 4k). As such, "people entertain themselves" doesn't justify 5G, just better 4G coverage.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  I agree. I have yet to see any solid argument for 5G being a some sort of game-changer for the end user.
  - twothamendment 7y ago
    I thought it was just me with the "who cares about 5G" attitude. Just give me better 4G coverage. Give me another tower in my area so my cell service isn't out while they work on the only one that serves me. Give me coverage that works at my neighbor's house too. I have poor coverage, but 700 feet away he doesn't have service.
    - mrweasel 7y ago
      5G won't even get you better coverage, that's more a question of which frequencies are used. Some European countries are freeing up the 700 to 800MHz spectrum which can help, but that's not really a 5G issue I believe. The high frequency ranges suggested for 5G seems useless, they'll barely be able to penetrate windows. Increased coverage would be far more helpful than faster speed in most countries.
  - Digit-Al 7y ago
    I'm partially with you there. I think it's partly that IoT will require higher bandwidth as there will be so many more devices. However, when I visit my mum in Wales it's really difficult to get a signal at all - even in the nearest town it can be annoyingly patchy. And there are many rural places with the same problems. Instead of spending millions nothing the speeds of the digital haves, why not spend to get a reliable service to the digital have-nots first?
    - darkpuma 7y ago
      I don't understand the IoT craze. My light switches work just fine, and if I really wanted to operate them remotely, I'd just get a clapper. A clapper is a lot more convenient than pulling out my smartphone and poking at the screen. I don't want my Roomba sending iRobot information about my home to sell to data brokers. I don't want my refrigerator telling my insurance company how much cheese I eat. But suppose I wasn't a neoluddite and I was easily excited by digital salt shakers. As it stands, all of these products could be using wifi, which would still give me, the consumer, the ability to firewall them. That would let me access them on my LAN without letting them talk on the internet. The idea of putting 5G radios in them instead of wifi radios seems to be to deprive me, the consumer, of the opportunity to firewall them.
- matchagaucho 7y ago
  Parkinson's Law. Increase in 5G bandwidth will be filled with next-gen media. Cable boxes will be replaced by subsidized free smartphones in exchange for "always on" subscriptions. No more home WiFi for low-end market. Personally, the industrial 5G IoT applications are far more interesting.
  - md224 7y ago
    > next-gen media What does this mean? Something beyond video? VR?
    - cjsawyer 7y ago
      If the bandwidth is available then people will find a way to fill it. Streaming games, higher res video, remote terminals replacing low end PC hardware, who knows?
      - md224 7y ago
        Good point, though I'll note that streaming games, high-res video, and remote terminals are already available (at least via high-speed ethernet connections), so the "next generation" would be higher quality or wider availability rather than genuinely new forms of media. My instinct is that there are diminishing returns past a certain point. We're certainly not there yet, but once cellular networks allow you to stream high-definition VR content and upload data at the same rate, it seems like there's nothing more that additional bandwidth could add. I see it as a philosophical issue... bandwidth is for the transmission of information, and there's only so much information that a human being can receive and provide at a given moment. At some point you're running up against the maximum bandwidth of the human user.
        minton 7y ago
        So we up the bandwidth, something like Elon’s NueraLink.
        vel0city 7y ago
- exabrial 7y ago
  I was with you until the bees thing. That's pseudoscience at best.
  - md224 7y ago
    Is it? I wasn't aware of this so I did some googling and found this study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-011-0016-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-011-0016-x This doesn't seem like pseudoscience to me, but I don't really have context here. Is this considered to be a poor study or a disreputable journal? Edit: Apparently it's been cited 61 times since publication: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=270710047801738518 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=270710047801738518 Edit 2: Okay, there's definitely skepticism: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cell-phones-kill-bees-study_n_863019 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cell-phones-kill-bees-study_n... I'm not sure if I'd call this "pseudoscience" as much as "speculative and controversial."
    - avip 7y ago
      prev. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2537839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2537839 (I recall much longer discussion, but could not find)
    - adsfqwop 7y ago
      Here's a study that looked at microwave absorption in insects at different frequencies (picture): https://media.springernature.com/lw900/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-018-22271-3/MediaObjects/41598_2018_22271_Fig4_HTML.jpg https://media.springernature.com/lw900/springer-static/image... "All insects showed a general increase in absorbed RF power at and above 6 GHz, in comparison to the absorbed RF power below 6 GHz. Our simulations showed that a shift of 10% of the incident power density to frequencies above 6 GHz would lead to an increase in absorbed power between 3–370%." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22271-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22271-3 It doesn't seem like pseudoscience to me either. In fact it looks to me like more real science needs be done on this subject, to figure out if there is a real danger or not.
  - N_trglctc_joe 7y ago
- lemmsjid 7y ago
  I am not saying the benefits outweigh the costs, but I think there's huge inroads to be made for high bandwidth communications tools like many-to-many video conferencing, which is tantalizingly close to being fast enough but still a pain in most situations I've encountered. Disclaimer: I am thoroughly ignorant about 4G and 5G so I don't know if 5g would help the typical issues that come up with video conferencing.
  - lima 7y ago
    It's painful even on a 1 Gbit/s dedicated fiber connection. Most video conferencing tools just suck.
- xkcd-sucks 7y ago
  Modern economics is a religion of growth for its own sake?
  - pas 7y ago
    That might be a simple no, but let's look at what growth is. Increase in consumption, and there's still a lot to go when it comes for the economy to provide the basic stuff for a decent life. Sure, if all that extra growth does not translate into increased well being for the median, or if it can't lift those out of poverty who need those efficiency gains that led to "growth", then, no, of course that growth is useless. However. Growth is amoral, and most economists are trying to understand the economy, not normatively influence it. (Though there are a lot of oped and blogs by economists.) And how the economy works, how does that growth happens is not up to the "modern economy", it's up to people. Politics. Modern economics is the religion of Cassandraism, anyone who understands what's going on is unable to persuade others. Look at how the Net Neutrality debate went down the drain, because somehow libertarian/dumb free market advocates can't comprehend that zero-touch no-regs complex systems have a tendency to end up in a pathological state. Or look at how people still can't believe that a bail-out was better for the economy short term, and how trying to do central planning without honest signals likely won't work. And this doesn't mean that it's easy to figure out these things, or that there's a 100% idiot proof way to get magical silver-bullet solutions, far from it. But it seems pretty straightforward that blindly ignoring those who study these things all their lives and just repeating a mantra - be it socialism or libertarianism - is not exactly helpful.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  But entertainment does count for me and billions of others like me.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    At least unexpected weather gives you something entertaining to talk about and post pictures of on social media.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  re: " I can already communicate with anyone in the world, " Summing up some of the other comments: 5G isn't about (personal) communication per se. No more "accessing the cloud". With 5G we'll be wrapped in the cloud. Etc. I'm not saying it's imperative we go there. Only that that's where we're headed. For better of worse. Like it or not.
  - hughes 7y ago
    What does that even mean?
    - blattimwind 7y ago
      Nothing. It's politician's bullshit bingo regurgitated so many times through the media that now people on HN start to echo it. We need 5G for self driving cars We need 5G for industry automation We need 5G for IoT (because that makes so much sense, lol) We need 5G for ...
      - Johnny555 7y ago
        I just saw a recent article touting the benefits of 5G for smart traffic signals.... but it's not clear why those same traffic signals couldn't use 4G, or even 2G, it's not like traffic counts need a lot of data bandwidth. Or, you know, it's not like traffic signals move around on their own, so they could just be hardwired.
        viraptor 7y ago
        Or even use LoRa for meshing which is 50kbps over 10km. As you said, there's only so much data a traffic signal needs.
        est31 7y ago
        There are already traffic signals out there that use radio signals to communicate with each other. They are used to manage the traffic around road construction sites. E.g.: http://www.fabema.de/en/products/traffic-light-systems/wireless-traffic-lights/ http://www.fabema.de/en/products/traffic-light-systems/wirel... So 5G is not needed for that purpose at all.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I think this is a great point, and that the main boon to 5G is the sprouting of lots of localized towers. It seems like a big giveaway to big telcos to the detriment of cable providers with bigger physical plants and capital needs. End of the day, as shitty as Spectrum and Comcast are, they are a better devil then the AT&T corporate offspring.
- prazgaitis 7y ago
  Why do we need it? To send you ads quicker, of course
- zjaffee 7y ago
  Think for a moment about how big of an impact 4g had, and 3g before it. As others mentioned above about the law that states that any new computing resource will eventually get filled, there are plenty of areas where this is worthwhile. The biggest first off would likely be the end of wifi as we know it, so in turn, an increasing number of IoT devices for the home/workplace/elsewhere would be built without the need for complicated wifi setup, and all syncing between devices would likely be done using a cellular setup. "Cable" would likely completely go away, where companies like Verizon realize they can deliver all TV over their 5g network. The constraints relating to numbers of devices on a wifi router will be backgrounded, ect. Another key piece is that there will be far more nodes in a 5g deployment, so you could do better triangulation for GPS. It will have lower latency so even tighter real time applications can be done over the internet. This list can go on and on.
  - omni 7y ago
    > the end of wifi as we know it Can you explain what specifically about 5G makes this possible? I don't know anything about it, but if the logistics and pricing for it are anything like 4G, I have no interest in paying my telecom an extra $5/mo per device when I can throw them on my own network for free.
    - TylerE 7y ago
      Because potentially "your network" goes away. You have no home-based "line". I'm skeptical, very, but the appeal is obvious if it works and the pricing isn't obscene.
      - viraptor 7y ago
        The pricing will be higher than 4G. The data caps will stay similar. Carriers are not charities and don't operate at cost - if they can charge us for extra value, they will.
        subway 7y ago
        s/for extra value//
- couchdive 7y ago
  be sure to research and laugh at e-rating windows and the 5g range.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  The confusing thing for me (not exactly well versed in networks) is that currently all 5G base stations seem to have ranges more akin to modern WiFi endpoints than LTE with regard to how densely deployments will need to be placed - am I missing something?
  - taneq 7y ago
    This is what gets me, too. LTE is great because it's mobile data - the range to a phone tower seems to be about the same as 2g/3g and the data rate is awesome. 5G is more like roaming wifi, and the data rate drops rapidly to the point where (iirc) if you're more than a couple of hundred meters from a tower it's no better than LTE. Why would I want this?
    - kiwijamo 7y ago
      I wonder if like the 3G and the 4G rollout in most countries, the first batch of deployments will use the higher frequencies for the new technology keeping the lower frequencies for the legacy technology to ensure everyone retains access to the exisiting coverage while giving some people access to some coverage using the new tech. Then as user adoption of the new tech approaches a certain point the lower frequencies are reallocated to the new technologies when the risk of reducing coverage for users of the old tech is not significant issue anymore. I’ve seen this occur with 2G to 3G (3G started with deployments only at 2100 MHz but is now mainly deployed at 900 MHz replacing the previous 2G services in that band) and 3G to 4G (4G initially mostly in 1800 MHz but many deployments now are in 700 MHz reframed from TV and 900 MHZ reframed from 2G/3G).
- northerdome 7y ago
  To me the greatest boon is to rural areas. I am incredibly excited about the opportunity 5G opens up to those who currently live with marginal access to the Internet because the monopolistic world of ISPs has prevented fast, consistent internet outside of major cities and population centers. The opportunity for education and services to everyone is the major promise of 5G. Now I just sit here and hope that actually comes to pass.
  - nyolfen 7y ago
    i was under the impression that the high power/short wavelength for 5g would practically limit it mostly to cities
    - michelb 7y ago
      Exactly. I predict many areas will never see 5G. You need more transmitters to cover the same distance as 4G.
      - kiwijamo 7y ago
        Many rural areas don’t even have 4G yet. These areas even less likely to get 5G anytime soon IMHO.
- mcv 7y ago
  I kinda agree. 4G feels "fast enough" to me, just like PCs have become pretty much "fast enough" about a decade ago. I'd rather see more work put into usability than in even higher speeds.
  - jethro_tell 7y ago
    The funny thing with the internet is that the content really doesn't ntake up that much space/speed. It's the ads and trackers. So that's why the industry is lobbying for that. Also, We still haven't even hit theoretical 3g speeds. But reallocation of spectrum is a quick easy way to get there without doing the work.
    - frandroid 7y ago
      > the content really doesn't ntake up that much space/speed video streaming
      - slang800 7y ago
        > Entertainment doesn't count.
        arcticbull 7y ago
        I feel like they answered their own question, entertainment does count.
        yellowapple 7y ago
        Not all video streaming is for entertainment. Case in point: security cameras.
        zrm 7y ago
        On the other hand, discouraging wireless security cameras is a benefit because they have poor security properties. Wireless exposes the cameras to attack by anyone within wireless range rather than requiring the attacker to have physical access, and also allows an attacker to disable the cameras with a wireless jammer.
- benevol 7y ago
  That's the crazy thing. Almost nobody asked for 5G. And certainly not our health. Their basically just stuffing this down our throats in the name of money. There's an international petition [0] and one in Switzerland [1] that I know of - please sign if you agree. [0] https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/ https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/ [1] https://www.change.org/p/p%C3%A9tition-contre-la-5g-et-ses-dangers-suisse-petition-dagegen-5g-und-seine-gefahren-schweiz-petizione-contro-i-pericoli-dei-5g-svizzera-petition-about-5g-and-his-dangers-petici%C3%B3n-contra-la-5g-y-sus-peligros-suiza https://www.change.org/p/p%C3%A9tition-contre-la-5g-et-ses-d...
- grahamburger 7y ago
  It's so that we can make cable companies obsolete without running fiber everywhere. 4G networks just don't have the capacity to support use for TV streaming - the hope is that 5G will.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    We will have to run fiber to all those 5G hotspots. 5G is very short range, it does not extend access to anywhere that doesn't already have good access, it just makes it possible to run devices at higher speeds without being tethered to a wall.
    - grahamburger 7y ago
      Yup! It means fiber to the neighborhood rather than fiber to the home. The proposal is that fiber to the neighborhood will be considerably cheaper than fiber to the home.
  - krick 7y ago
    I don't believe cable companies will become obsolete anytime soon, lol. There's a tendency to rely on cloud-stuff more and more, we stream video instead of downloading, 4k, 8k, we store entire collections on google drive and stuff. And even if you think 5G will solve all problems with the bandwidth — well, I won't argue, but there are plenty applications (like gaming) that require low-latency, which 5G will solve not.
    - grahamburger 7y ago
      Note that I'm not necessarily arguing that this line of thinking (5g will obsolete cable companies) is correct, only that that's why mobile operators want it so badly - they want you to be able to drop Comcast and give them your money instead. That being said there's absolutely no reason why 5G (or even 4G or low Earth orbit Sat) couldn't compete with cable companies on latency. In many places 4G is already lower latency than existing cable networks. Edit to add: 4G also already offers fast enough connections for 4K and in many places 8K streaming. It's the total capacity that isn't there - they have to put data caps on so people don't do all their streaming on their mobile connection. 5G is more about removing data caps than providing faster speeds.
- adreamingsoul 7y ago
  I agree.
- jopsen 7y ago
  > possibly on bees Citation needed, this seems like FUD.
  - N_trglctc_joe 7y ago
    Hey jobson, fair point. Please read my reply to exabrial below. There's a couple other commenters with salient links there, too.
  - adsfqwop 7y ago
    Have a look at section 2.4 of this document: https://www.pathophysiologyjournal.com/article/S0928-4680(09)00003-0/fulltext https://www.pathophysiologyjournal.com/article/S0928-4680(09... Some excerpts: "Panagopoulos et al. [99] exposed fruit flies (D. melanogaster) to radiation from a mobile phone (900 MHz) during the 2–5 first days of adulthood. The reproductive capacity of the species reduced by 50–60% in modulated radiation conditions." "The authors concluded that radio frequencies, specifically GSM, are highly bioactive and provoke significant changes in physiological functions of living organisms." The paper references over 100 studies in total on the subject of biological RF effects.
- nine_k 7y ago
  > Entertainment doesn't count. But it's what like 90% of users use their devices for! :-/ Sorry about that, but you (and me) are a minority.
  - N_trglctc_joe 7y ago
    Just because most users use their devices for entertainment doesn't mean that entertainment is a valid reason to need more bandwidth. Most users couldn't give a good gosh dang whether the resolution is higher on their 6" phone. It makes literally (literally) no difference. Nice emoticon, btw. It definitely didn't make me completely disregard your opinion.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  I think it's driven by network utilization on the carrier side and battery life on the device manufacturer side. Your monthly 1GB (let's say) usage cap at EDGE speeds translates to around 5 hours of constant connection. At 4G speeds (40Mbps typical for me) that's just 3.41 minutes. If we can get that to 10X for 5G, that's just 20 seconds. Over the last decade we've gone from using 5 hours of data per subscriber to less than 4 minutes, and potentially down to 20 seconds. Similarly, latency went from 400ms ping to 5ms. This improves network performance, since the tower is more likely to be available when you need it, and faster too, even if the average throughput and backhaul link remains unchanged. It also improves battery life because the battery is primarily draining during active comm sessions. Get them in faster, serve them faster and back to sleep faster. Think of it in terms of Apple's MacBook. The finite resource here is more complex as it's both thermal and power. The CPU tops out at an average of 1.3GHz but it has an instantaneous turbo-boost to 3.2GHz. You could say that 1.3GHz is pretty fast and gets the job done, if it represents the same TDP, why bother going faster? The answer is it improves your experience (lower latency on bursty workloads). It also improves your battery life because it's more efficient to spend 1/3 the time at 3.2GHz and 2/3 the time sleeping than the whole time at 1.3GHz. I think Apple described it as "racing to get back to sleep." Obviously this breaks down with sustained workloads, though I'd argue the same is true of 5G.
  - jackvalentine 7y ago
    Okay sure, but what can you _do_ with that extra throughput is what OP is asking. You're making the classic IT-guy failure of talking about the technical feature rather than the user outcome (I have had to train myself out of this in recent years so I'm not having a go at you).
    - renaudg 7y ago
      The fact that the almost exact same conversations happened with the advent of broadband, mobile data, 3G, 3G+, 4G should give you a hint.
      - jackvalentine 7y ago
- jedieaston 7y ago
  The main interesting part isn’t about making phones faster (although that’s a fantastic side effect since now it’ll be feasible to work off a cellular connection instead of having to find a good cable link for fast internet), it’s about everything else. Houses don’t necessarily have to have wired to the home fiber, instead, a 5G antenna on the side could easily get you gigabit.
- closeparen 7y ago
  Maintaining the existing level of service as more people use their phones more heavily at greater population densities. As I understand it, 5G is more about network scalability than about improving end-user experience (though of course end-user experience falls off a cliff if the network reaches saturation).
- ChrisRR 7y ago
  Why does entertainment not count? Entertainment is the basis of our entire civilisation. If everyone were content then no-one would be striving to create better movies, cook better food, play sports, create higher definition TVs, increase processor power, communicate and travel across the world. If we were all happy to sit on our own in silence, eating the same local crop day in, day out, then very little would be developed.
sandworm101 7y ago
If 5G is going to impact radio astronomy then the governments that license the spectrum should fund alternatives. Some simple space-based telescopes orbiting out beyond the 5G bubble would be expensive but not terribly difficult (radio telescopes, not the JWST). Put a couple out beyond the moon and the next image of a black hole won't be so blurry.
- idoescompooters 7y ago
  More info on impact of satellite constellations on radio astronomy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712625
- brandmeyer 7y ago
  Large dishes and large networks of large dishes are economical on the ground in ways that are utterly impractical in space.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    Yes and no. Those large dishes on earth require massive support structures. In the zero gravity of space large dishes can float virtually unsupported. There are spy sats with extremely large reflectors. The biggest geostationary ones can been seen from earth, meaning they have reflectors on the order of 100m+ in diameter. Turn one of these around and we would have a very capable radio telescope, much as how a redesign of another spysat program gave us hubble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-202 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-202 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite)
    - brandmeyer 7y ago
      For the low, low price of 2 gigabucks each. For an idea of scale, the entire VLA was built for ~80 megabucks. The entire Atacama Large Millimeter Array was built for 1.4 gigabucks.
      - 7y ago
craftyguy 7y ago
As an amateur astronomer, I would greatly prefer preserving radio astronomy to allowing folks to have faster facebook crap streams on mobile devices.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  All things considered, I'm glad we don't live under an amateur astronomer dictatorship.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Radio astronomy has never had a better moment to push for its interest than now - just fire up the PR machine, and say: "Seen that black hole pic? Want more things like that? Better pics? Well, then let us keep our spectrum!"
  - aeternus 7y ago
    There have got to be other solutions for radio astronomy. Let's look at options like putting telescope relays at lagrange points, or in orbit of other planets where there is no spectrum interference. The black hole pic was cool, but you know what would make it even cooler and higher-res? Using the same technique with an even wider array (interplanetary) telescopes.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      I'm all 100% into that. Wish there was a way to help make this happen.
    - orbital-decay 7y ago
      > Let's look at options like putting telescope relays at lagrange points That's precisely what Millimetron/Spektr-M aims to do, but it still needs the ground part. You can't put the 100m Green Bank Telescope into orbit.
- airstrike 7y ago
  Sure, but what is important for me or you individually is not how we make decisions on policy affecting everyone collectively
davengh 7y ago
>> save a local river bait fish A few or more of those and we have real loss in biodiversity. Maybe your "local river" can sustain that for a bit - but overall they are all important.
woah 7y ago
What does 5g have to do with satellites? It’s a marketing push around some scheduled cellular equipment upgrades.
- autocorr 7y ago
  They're probably not related, but I was thinking of the thing that SpaceX and another company are planning for satellite internet. I've heard that it would use the same centimeter wavelengths, probably for bandwidth reasons among others. I assumed that they were likely the same thing if they were both operating in the same frequency range.
dontbenebby 7y ago
Would it be possible to send up a space based telescope in those frequencies? Maybe the economic benefit of 5G would be enough to justify a one time cost of a telescope launch, especially if US, EU, and Russia all pitch in.
watersb 7y ago
autocorr, do you know if the Jansky VLA WIDAR correlator will be able to deal with 5G? A primary design goal was terrestrial signal rejection; we would get nuked by ABQ Traffic Control radar etc. I haven't kept up. I suppose I should find out.

N_trglctc_joe 7y ago

> While 5G Will be a great boon This is something I've been having trouble with. Lately I've become more aware of the secondary effects of 5G- on weather forecasting, on the radio spectrum, possibly on bees- and it's got me wondering why we need it for telecom. I just don't see the value added. I can already communicate with anyone in the world, access any information, and find my way anywhere with 4G. A significantly higher rate of data transfer just doesn't seem to add any new functionality to my phone. Can anyone give me a good rationale for 5G? Entertainment doesn't count. I'll grant right-off-the-bat that it'll have some fantastic industrial applications; my issue is with personal telecom. It just feels like a new planned obsolescence vector.

ashleyn 7y ago
Except entertainment does count according to customer use metrics.
- jolmg 7y ago
  Does anyone feel 4G is lacking in any way? I don't think I'd notice if my phone's network was any faster.
  - NegativeLatency 7y ago
    I think it's more about power usage. Shorter bursts of more data vs having the radio on for longer.
  - thomascgalvin 7y ago
    The real issue is coverage, not highest-available speed. It doesn't matter if Verizon puts up a tower that lets you download 10GB per second if you live in an area that Verizon doesn't care about servicing.
    - veritas_veritad 7y ago
      but how/why would 5G increase coverage?
    - trophycase 7y ago
      It doesn't matter if Verizon lets you download 10G a second if the average 10G/month data plan costs hundreds
  - TrueDuality 7y ago
    The biggest thing preventing me from using 4G more has nothing to do with speed or coverage. It's the caps and pricing on bandwidth consumption. I doubt 5G is going to change that.
    - fullofstack 7y ago
      5G will increase capacity, especially in urban areas, enabling cheaper unlimited plans.
      - TrueDuality 7y ago
        Looking only at capacity, it will definitely be cheaper to provide unlimited plans but even if that was the only factor, there isn't much of an incentive for carriers to change how they charge for bandwidth. In all likelihood prices will go up as 5G requires a massive infrastructure deployment of very expensive hardware, spectrum licensing, and they'll have to pay to transmit and receive that data to the internet. All of those additional costs will be passed on to customers.
- kurthr 7y ago
  Circuses, but maybe not so much bread?
- N_trglctc_joe 7y ago
  People can already steam music and Netflix (or whatever) and be happy with it. You don't need 4k revolution (or lossless music) on your tablet. If you cared that much about quality, you'd watch $whatever on an actual monitor (which, given our technology, is EITHER easily mobile OR better in 4k). As such, "people entertain themselves" doesn't justify 5G, just better 4G coverage.
JohnFen 7y ago
I agree. I have yet to see any solid argument for 5G being a some sort of game-changer for the end user.
- twothamendment 7y ago
  I thought it was just me with the "who cares about 5G" attitude. Just give me better 4G coverage. Give me another tower in my area so my cell service isn't out while they work on the only one that serves me. Give me coverage that works at my neighbor's house too. I have poor coverage, but 700 feet away he doesn't have service.
  - mrweasel 7y ago
    5G won't even get you better coverage, that's more a question of which frequencies are used. Some European countries are freeing up the 700 to 800MHz spectrum which can help, but that's not really a 5G issue I believe. The high frequency ranges suggested for 5G seems useless, they'll barely be able to penetrate windows. Increased coverage would be far more helpful than faster speed in most countries.
- Digit-Al 7y ago
  I'm partially with you there. I think it's partly that IoT will require higher bandwidth as there will be so many more devices. However, when I visit my mum in Wales it's really difficult to get a signal at all - even in the nearest town it can be annoyingly patchy. And there are many rural places with the same problems. Instead of spending millions nothing the speeds of the digital haves, why not spend to get a reliable service to the digital have-nots first?
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    I don't understand the IoT craze. My light switches work just fine, and if I really wanted to operate them remotely, I'd just get a clapper. A clapper is a lot more convenient than pulling out my smartphone and poking at the screen. I don't want my Roomba sending iRobot information about my home to sell to data brokers. I don't want my refrigerator telling my insurance company how much cheese I eat. But suppose I wasn't a neoluddite and I was easily excited by digital salt shakers. As it stands, all of these products could be using wifi, which would still give me, the consumer, the ability to firewall them. That would let me access them on my LAN without letting them talk on the internet. The idea of putting 5G radios in them instead of wifi radios seems to be to deprive me, the consumer, of the opportunity to firewall them.
matchagaucho 7y ago
Parkinson's Law. Increase in 5G bandwidth will be filled with next-gen media. Cable boxes will be replaced by subsidized free smartphones in exchange for "always on" subscriptions. No more home WiFi for low-end market. Personally, the industrial 5G IoT applications are far more interesting.
- md224 7y ago
  > next-gen media What does this mean? Something beyond video? VR?
  - cjsawyer 7y ago
    If the bandwidth is available then people will find a way to fill it. Streaming games, higher res video, remote terminals replacing low end PC hardware, who knows?
    - md224 7y ago
      Good point, though I'll note that streaming games, high-res video, and remote terminals are already available (at least via high-speed ethernet connections), so the "next generation" would be higher quality or wider availability rather than genuinely new forms of media. My instinct is that there are diminishing returns past a certain point. We're certainly not there yet, but once cellular networks allow you to stream high-definition VR content and upload data at the same rate, it seems like there's nothing more that additional bandwidth could add. I see it as a philosophical issue... bandwidth is for the transmission of information, and there's only so much information that a human being can receive and provide at a given moment. At some point you're running up against the maximum bandwidth of the human user.
      - minton 7y ago
        So we up the bandwidth, something like Elon’s NueraLink.
      - vel0city 7y ago
exabrial 7y ago
I was with you until the bees thing. That's pseudoscience at best.
- md224 7y ago
  Is it? I wasn't aware of this so I did some googling and found this study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-011-0016-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-011-0016-x This doesn't seem like pseudoscience to me, but I don't really have context here. Is this considered to be a poor study or a disreputable journal? Edit: Apparently it's been cited 61 times since publication: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=270710047801738518 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=270710047801738518 Edit 2: Okay, there's definitely skepticism: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cell-phones-kill-bees-study_n_863019 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cell-phones-kill-bees-study_n... I'm not sure if I'd call this "pseudoscience" as much as "speculative and controversial."
  - avip 7y ago
    prev. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2537839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2537839 (I recall much longer discussion, but could not find)
  - adsfqwop 7y ago
    Here's a study that looked at microwave absorption in insects at different frequencies (picture): https://media.springernature.com/lw900/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-018-22271-3/MediaObjects/41598_2018_22271_Fig4_HTML.jpg https://media.springernature.com/lw900/springer-static/image... "All insects showed a general increase in absorbed RF power at and above 6 GHz, in comparison to the absorbed RF power below 6 GHz. Our simulations showed that a shift of 10% of the incident power density to frequencies above 6 GHz would lead to an increase in absorbed power between 3–370%." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22271-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22271-3 It doesn't seem like pseudoscience to me either. In fact it looks to me like more real science needs be done on this subject, to figure out if there is a real danger or not.
- N_trglctc_joe 7y ago
lemmsjid 7y ago
I am not saying the benefits outweigh the costs, but I think there's huge inroads to be made for high bandwidth communications tools like many-to-many video conferencing, which is tantalizingly close to being fast enough but still a pain in most situations I've encountered. Disclaimer: I am thoroughly ignorant about 4G and 5G so I don't know if 5g would help the typical issues that come up with video conferencing.
- lima 7y ago
  It's painful even on a 1 Gbit/s dedicated fiber connection. Most video conferencing tools just suck.
xkcd-sucks 7y ago
Modern economics is a religion of growth for its own sake?
- pas 7y ago
  That might be a simple no, but let's look at what growth is. Increase in consumption, and there's still a lot to go when it comes for the economy to provide the basic stuff for a decent life. Sure, if all that extra growth does not translate into increased well being for the median, or if it can't lift those out of poverty who need those efficiency gains that led to "growth", then, no, of course that growth is useless. However. Growth is amoral, and most economists are trying to understand the economy, not normatively influence it. (Though there are a lot of oped and blogs by economists.) And how the economy works, how does that growth happens is not up to the "modern economy", it's up to people. Politics. Modern economics is the religion of Cassandraism, anyone who understands what's going on is unable to persuade others. Look at how the Net Neutrality debate went down the drain, because somehow libertarian/dumb free market advocates can't comprehend that zero-touch no-regs complex systems have a tendency to end up in a pathological state. Or look at how people still can't believe that a bail-out was better for the economy short term, and how trying to do central planning without honest signals likely won't work. And this doesn't mean that it's easy to figure out these things, or that there's a 100% idiot proof way to get magical silver-bullet solutions, far from it. But it seems pretty straightforward that blindly ignoring those who study these things all their lives and just repeating a mantra - be it socialism or libertarianism - is not exactly helpful.
BurningFrog 7y ago
But entertainment does count for me and billions of others like me.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  At least unexpected weather gives you something entertaining to talk about and post pictures of on social media.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
re: " I can already communicate with anyone in the world, " Summing up some of the other comments: 5G isn't about (personal) communication per se. No more "accessing the cloud". With 5G we'll be wrapped in the cloud. Etc. I'm not saying it's imperative we go there. Only that that's where we're headed. For better of worse. Like it or not.
- hughes 7y ago
  What does that even mean?
  - blattimwind 7y ago
    Nothing. It's politician's bullshit bingo regurgitated so many times through the media that now people on HN start to echo it. We need 5G for self driving cars We need 5G for industry automation We need 5G for IoT (because that makes so much sense, lol) We need 5G for ...
    - Johnny555 7y ago
      I just saw a recent article touting the benefits of 5G for smart traffic signals.... but it's not clear why those same traffic signals couldn't use 4G, or even 2G, it's not like traffic counts need a lot of data bandwidth. Or, you know, it's not like traffic signals move around on their own, so they could just be hardwired.
      - viraptor 7y ago
        Or even use LoRa for meshing which is 50kbps over 10km. As you said, there's only so much data a traffic signal needs.
      - est31 7y ago
        There are already traffic signals out there that use radio signals to communicate with each other. They are used to manage the traffic around road construction sites. E.g.: http://www.fabema.de/en/products/traffic-light-systems/wireless-traffic-lights/ http://www.fabema.de/en/products/traffic-light-systems/wirel... So 5G is not needed for that purpose at all.
Spooky23 7y ago
I think this is a great point, and that the main boon to 5G is the sprouting of lots of localized towers. It seems like a big giveaway to big telcos to the detriment of cable providers with bigger physical plants and capital needs. End of the day, as shitty as Spectrum and Comcast are, they are a better devil then the AT&T corporate offspring.
prazgaitis 7y ago
Why do we need it? To send you ads quicker, of course
zjaffee 7y ago
Think for a moment about how big of an impact 4g had, and 3g before it. As others mentioned above about the law that states that any new computing resource will eventually get filled, there are plenty of areas where this is worthwhile. The biggest first off would likely be the end of wifi as we know it, so in turn, an increasing number of IoT devices for the home/workplace/elsewhere would be built without the need for complicated wifi setup, and all syncing between devices would likely be done using a cellular setup. "Cable" would likely completely go away, where companies like Verizon realize they can deliver all TV over their 5g network. The constraints relating to numbers of devices on a wifi router will be backgrounded, ect. Another key piece is that there will be far more nodes in a 5g deployment, so you could do better triangulation for GPS. It will have lower latency so even tighter real time applications can be done over the internet. This list can go on and on.
- omni 7y ago
  > the end of wifi as we know it Can you explain what specifically about 5G makes this possible? I don't know anything about it, but if the logistics and pricing for it are anything like 4G, I have no interest in paying my telecom an extra $5/mo per device when I can throw them on my own network for free.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    Because potentially "your network" goes away. You have no home-based "line". I'm skeptical, very, but the appeal is obvious if it works and the pricing isn't obscene.
    - viraptor 7y ago
      The pricing will be higher than 4G. The data caps will stay similar. Carriers are not charities and don't operate at cost - if they can charge us for extra value, they will.
      - subway 7y ago
        s/for extra value//
couchdive 7y ago
be sure to research and laugh at e-rating windows and the 5g range.
akhilcacharya 7y ago
The confusing thing for me (not exactly well versed in networks) is that currently all 5G base stations seem to have ranges more akin to modern WiFi endpoints than LTE with regard to how densely deployments will need to be placed - am I missing something?
- taneq 7y ago
  This is what gets me, too. LTE is great because it's mobile data - the range to a phone tower seems to be about the same as 2g/3g and the data rate is awesome. 5G is more like roaming wifi, and the data rate drops rapidly to the point where (iirc) if you're more than a couple of hundred meters from a tower it's no better than LTE. Why would I want this?
  - kiwijamo 7y ago
    I wonder if like the 3G and the 4G rollout in most countries, the first batch of deployments will use the higher frequencies for the new technology keeping the lower frequencies for the legacy technology to ensure everyone retains access to the exisiting coverage while giving some people access to some coverage using the new tech. Then as user adoption of the new tech approaches a certain point the lower frequencies are reallocated to the new technologies when the risk of reducing coverage for users of the old tech is not significant issue anymore. I’ve seen this occur with 2G to 3G (3G started with deployments only at 2100 MHz but is now mainly deployed at 900 MHz replacing the previous 2G services in that band) and 3G to 4G (4G initially mostly in 1800 MHz but many deployments now are in 700 MHz reframed from TV and 900 MHZ reframed from 2G/3G).
northerdome 7y ago
To me the greatest boon is to rural areas. I am incredibly excited about the opportunity 5G opens up to those who currently live with marginal access to the Internet because the monopolistic world of ISPs has prevented fast, consistent internet outside of major cities and population centers. The opportunity for education and services to everyone is the major promise of 5G. Now I just sit here and hope that actually comes to pass.
- nyolfen 7y ago
  i was under the impression that the high power/short wavelength for 5g would practically limit it mostly to cities
  - michelb 7y ago
    Exactly. I predict many areas will never see 5G. You need more transmitters to cover the same distance as 4G.
    - kiwijamo 7y ago
      Many rural areas don’t even have 4G yet. These areas even less likely to get 5G anytime soon IMHO.
mcv 7y ago
I kinda agree. 4G feels "fast enough" to me, just like PCs have become pretty much "fast enough" about a decade ago. I'd rather see more work put into usability than in even higher speeds.
- jethro_tell 7y ago
  The funny thing with the internet is that the content really doesn't ntake up that much space/speed. It's the ads and trackers. So that's why the industry is lobbying for that. Also, We still haven't even hit theoretical 3g speeds. But reallocation of spectrum is a quick easy way to get there without doing the work.
  - frandroid 7y ago
    > the content really doesn't ntake up that much space/speed video streaming
    - slang800 7y ago
      > Entertainment doesn't count.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        I feel like they answered their own question, entertainment does count.
      - yellowapple 7y ago
        Not all video streaming is for entertainment. Case in point: security cameras.
        zrm 7y ago
        On the other hand, discouraging wireless security cameras is a benefit because they have poor security properties. Wireless exposes the cameras to attack by anyone within wireless range rather than requiring the attacker to have physical access, and also allows an attacker to disable the cameras with a wireless jammer.
benevol 7y ago
That's the crazy thing. Almost nobody asked for 5G. And certainly not our health. Their basically just stuffing this down our throats in the name of money. There's an international petition [0] and one in Switzerland [1] that I know of - please sign if you agree. [0] https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/ https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/ [1] https://www.change.org/p/p%C3%A9tition-contre-la-5g-et-ses-dangers-suisse-petition-dagegen-5g-und-seine-gefahren-schweiz-petizione-contro-i-pericoli-dei-5g-svizzera-petition-about-5g-and-his-dangers-petici%C3%B3n-contra-la-5g-y-sus-peligros-suiza https://www.change.org/p/p%C3%A9tition-contre-la-5g-et-ses-d...
grahamburger 7y ago
It's so that we can make cable companies obsolete without running fiber everywhere. 4G networks just don't have the capacity to support use for TV streaming - the hope is that 5G will.
- paulmd 7y ago
  We will have to run fiber to all those 5G hotspots. 5G is very short range, it does not extend access to anywhere that doesn't already have good access, it just makes it possible to run devices at higher speeds without being tethered to a wall.
  - grahamburger 7y ago
    Yup! It means fiber to the neighborhood rather than fiber to the home. The proposal is that fiber to the neighborhood will be considerably cheaper than fiber to the home.
- krick 7y ago
  I don't believe cable companies will become obsolete anytime soon, lol. There's a tendency to rely on cloud-stuff more and more, we stream video instead of downloading, 4k, 8k, we store entire collections on google drive and stuff. And even if you think 5G will solve all problems with the bandwidth — well, I won't argue, but there are plenty applications (like gaming) that require low-latency, which 5G will solve not.
  - grahamburger 7y ago
    Note that I'm not necessarily arguing that this line of thinking (5g will obsolete cable companies) is correct, only that that's why mobile operators want it so badly - they want you to be able to drop Comcast and give them your money instead. That being said there's absolutely no reason why 5G (or even 4G or low Earth orbit Sat) couldn't compete with cable companies on latency. In many places 4G is already lower latency than existing cable networks. Edit to add: 4G also already offers fast enough connections for 4K and in many places 8K streaming. It's the total capacity that isn't there - they have to put data caps on so people don't do all their streaming on their mobile connection. 5G is more about removing data caps than providing faster speeds.
adreamingsoul 7y ago
I agree.
jopsen 7y ago
> possibly on bees Citation needed, this seems like FUD.
- N_trglctc_joe 7y ago
  Hey jobson, fair point. Please read my reply to exabrial below. There's a couple other commenters with salient links there, too.
- adsfqwop 7y ago
  Have a look at section 2.4 of this document: https://www.pathophysiologyjournal.com/article/S0928-4680(09)00003-0/fulltext https://www.pathophysiologyjournal.com/article/S0928-4680(09... Some excerpts: "Panagopoulos et al. [99] exposed fruit flies (D. melanogaster) to radiation from a mobile phone (900 MHz) during the 2–5 first days of adulthood. The reproductive capacity of the species reduced by 50–60% in modulated radiation conditions." "The authors concluded that radio frequencies, specifically GSM, are highly bioactive and provoke significant changes in physiological functions of living organisms." The paper references over 100 studies in total on the subject of biological RF effects.
nine_k 7y ago
> Entertainment doesn't count. But it's what like 90% of users use their devices for! :-/ Sorry about that, but you (and me) are a minority.
- N_trglctc_joe 7y ago
  Just because most users use their devices for entertainment doesn't mean that entertainment is a valid reason to need more bandwidth. Most users couldn't give a good gosh dang whether the resolution is higher on their 6" phone. It makes literally (literally) no difference. Nice emoticon, btw. It definitely didn't make me completely disregard your opinion.
arcticbull 7y ago
I think it's driven by network utilization on the carrier side and battery life on the device manufacturer side. Your monthly 1GB (let's say) usage cap at EDGE speeds translates to around 5 hours of constant connection. At 4G speeds (40Mbps typical for me) that's just 3.41 minutes. If we can get that to 10X for 5G, that's just 20 seconds. Over the last decade we've gone from using 5 hours of data per subscriber to less than 4 minutes, and potentially down to 20 seconds. Similarly, latency went from 400ms ping to 5ms. This improves network performance, since the tower is more likely to be available when you need it, and faster too, even if the average throughput and backhaul link remains unchanged. It also improves battery life because the battery is primarily draining during active comm sessions. Get them in faster, serve them faster and back to sleep faster. Think of it in terms of Apple's MacBook. The finite resource here is more complex as it's both thermal and power. The CPU tops out at an average of 1.3GHz but it has an instantaneous turbo-boost to 3.2GHz. You could say that 1.3GHz is pretty fast and gets the job done, if it represents the same TDP, why bother going faster? The answer is it improves your experience (lower latency on bursty workloads). It also improves your battery life because it's more efficient to spend 1/3 the time at 3.2GHz and 2/3 the time sleeping than the whole time at 1.3GHz. I think Apple described it as "racing to get back to sleep." Obviously this breaks down with sustained workloads, though I'd argue the same is true of 5G.
- jackvalentine 7y ago
  Okay sure, but what can you _do_ with that extra throughput is what OP is asking. You're making the classic IT-guy failure of talking about the technical feature rather than the user outcome (I have had to train myself out of this in recent years so I'm not having a go at you).
  - renaudg 7y ago
    The fact that the almost exact same conversations happened with the advent of broadband, mobile data, 3G, 3G+, 4G should give you a hint.
    - jackvalentine 7y ago
jedieaston 7y ago
The main interesting part isn’t about making phones faster (although that’s a fantastic side effect since now it’ll be feasible to work off a cellular connection instead of having to find a good cable link for fast internet), it’s about everything else. Houses don’t necessarily have to have wired to the home fiber, instead, a 5G antenna on the side could easily get you gigabit.
closeparen 7y ago
Maintaining the existing level of service as more people use their phones more heavily at greater population densities. As I understand it, 5G is more about network scalability than about improving end-user experience (though of course end-user experience falls off a cliff if the network reaches saturation).
ChrisRR 7y ago
Why does entertainment not count? Entertainment is the basis of our entire civilisation. If everyone were content then no-one would be striving to create better movies, cook better food, play sports, create higher definition TVs, increase processor power, communicate and travel across the world. If we were all happy to sit on our own in silence, eating the same local crop day in, day out, then very little would be developed.

sandworm101 7y ago

If 5G is going to impact radio astronomy then the governments that license the spectrum should fund alternatives. Some simple space-based telescopes orbiting out beyond the 5G bubble would be expensive but not terribly difficult (radio telescopes, not the JWST). Put a couple out beyond the moon and the next image of a black hole won't be so blurry.

idoescompooters 7y ago
More info on impact of satellite constellations on radio astronomy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712625
brandmeyer 7y ago
Large dishes and large networks of large dishes are economical on the ground in ways that are utterly impractical in space.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  Yes and no. Those large dishes on earth require massive support structures. In the zero gravity of space large dishes can float virtually unsupported. There are spy sats with extremely large reflectors. The biggest geostationary ones can been seen from earth, meaning they have reflectors on the order of 100m+ in diameter. Turn one of these around and we would have a very capable radio telescope, much as how a redesign of another spysat program gave us hubble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-202 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-202 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite)
  - brandmeyer 7y ago
    For the low, low price of 2 gigabucks each. For an idea of scale, the entire VLA was built for ~80 megabucks. The entire Atacama Large Millimeter Array was built for 1.4 gigabucks.
    - 7y ago

craftyguy 7y ago

As an amateur astronomer, I would greatly prefer preserving radio astronomy to allowing folks to have faster facebook crap streams on mobile devices.

BurningFrog 7y ago
All things considered, I'm glad we don't live under an amateur astronomer dictatorship.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Radio astronomy has never had a better moment to push for its interest than now - just fire up the PR machine, and say: "Seen that black hole pic? Want more things like that? Better pics? Well, then let us keep our spectrum!"
- aeternus 7y ago
  There have got to be other solutions for radio astronomy. Let's look at options like putting telescope relays at lagrange points, or in orbit of other planets where there is no spectrum interference. The black hole pic was cool, but you know what would make it even cooler and higher-res? Using the same technique with an even wider array (interplanetary) telescopes.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I'm all 100% into that. Wish there was a way to help make this happen.
  - orbital-decay 7y ago
    > Let's look at options like putting telescope relays at lagrange points That's precisely what Millimetron/Spektr-M aims to do, but it still needs the ground part. You can't put the 100m Green Bank Telescope into orbit.
airstrike 7y ago
Sure, but what is important for me or you individually is not how we make decisions on policy affecting everyone collectively

davengh 7y ago

>> save a local river bait fish A few or more of those and we have real loss in biodiversity. Maybe your "local river" can sustain that for a bit - but overall they are all important.

woah 7y ago

What does 5g have to do with satellites? It’s a marketing push around some scheduled cellular equipment upgrades.

autocorr 7y ago
They're probably not related, but I was thinking of the thing that SpaceX and another company are planning for satellite internet. I've heard that it would use the same centimeter wavelengths, probably for bandwidth reasons among others. I assumed that they were likely the same thing if they were both operating in the same frequency range.

dontbenebby 7y ago

Would it be possible to send up a space based telescope in those frequencies? Maybe the economic benefit of 5G would be enough to justify a one time cost of a telescope launch, especially if US, EU, and Russia all pitch in.

watersb 7y ago

autocorr, do you know if the Jansky VLA WIDAR correlator will be able to deal with 5G? A primary design goal was terrestrial signal rejection; we would get nuked by ABQ Traffic Control radar etc. I haven't kept up. I suppose I should find out.