[Durham INC] 5G Wireless

[Philip Azar]

Thanks, Pat!

> On Feb 2, 2018, at 7:37 AM, Pat Carstensen <pats1717 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> At a recent INC meeting, DeDreana Freeman brought up a question about what is 5G wireless and what will it mean for neighborhoods.
> 
> What is 5G:  It is the 5th generation of cellular technology; each generation of wireless has brought more capabilities and bandwidth and has required a large investment from the industry and new handsets for consumers.  5G is supposed to be "crazy fast, crazy stable and crazy versatile."  It not only will let you download a movie but also will let autonomous vehicles talk to one another (just what we need!).  It will be using an entirely different set of frequencies from the spectrum.  
> 
> When is it coming:  Deployment will probably follow the 5 and 10 rule -- we will get a lot less than we expect in 5 years and a lot more than we expect in 10 years. Unfortunately if your neighborhood has iffy cell service now, it probably won't get fixed since the cell companies are going to put their investment into the 5G stuff.
> 
> What infrastructure does it need:  Because of the physics of the frequencies used and the amount of bandwidth used by each user, each tower will be "talking" to a lot smaller area than a 4G tower.  So the technology will need LOTS of short towers (more like telephone poles than our current cell towers) or attachments on buildings.  
> 
> What is the government doing about it:  The NC legislature passed House Bill 310 last year that limit what local governments can do to control the towers -- they have to show the tower will violate specific criteria -- but will let us charge if the towers are built in public space. The FCC is also "reducing or eliminating regulatory barriers."  Apparently the Trump administration has considered nationalizing the 5G network to get it faster and protect us from the Chinese. 
> 
> What are the benefits:  The bandwidth will be great.
> 
> What are the concerns:  The towers will be shorter, so we don't need about them falling on us so much, and they won't intrude so much on the landscape.  About once every 4 years, someone comes out with a study that says the radiation from cell phones is a problem, and then the cell companies and the FCC put out 3 studies saying there's no problem.  Because 5G uses a different frequency and the shorter towers mean the radiation is closer to people, I would personally would like to see more testing about effects.  However, calling them "death towers" is probably extreme, and the official line is "no worries."
> 
> Sources:  
> https://www.wired.com/2017/02/what-is-5g-and-when-do-i-get-it/
> https://www.axios.com/trump-team-debates-nationalizing-5g-network-f1e92a49-60f2-4e3e-acd4-f3eb03d910ff.html
> http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article153440684.html 
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