5G Health Risk

As U.S. telecom companies start rolling out 5G wireless networks, look at what’s happening in Switzerland, where 90% of the population already is covered by the new 5G. People there are getting sick and are marching in the streets to oppose the new networks. As soon as the antennas were installed, Geneva residents started reporting unusual symptoms such as “loud ringing in the ear, intense headaches, unbearable earaches, insomnia, chest pain, fatigue and not feeling well in the house.”

When someone posted a link to that article about the Swiss experience on VoxCare, it generated much discussion. I shared my own perspective as someone with wireless expertise, since I worked in wireless at IBM and represented the company in developing wireless standards. That perspective deserves repeating here.

INTENSITY & DURATION

Imagine trying to sleep with artificial lights on all day and night – very bright, bluish color lights shining directly into your eyes. Imagine trying to concentrate with a loud sound blaring – not soothing music, but very loud noise of some sort. And now imagine the long-term health effects of that, year after year.

That’s the potential danger of being surrounded by radio signals, especially if relentless and of high-intensity. While we humans can’t see or hear the radio signals, they’re still there, and they affect our bodies like other forms of electromagnetic radiation. 5G is like Light & Sound but with different frequencies.

In moderation there may be no problem, but real harm can occur over a long period of weeks, months, years, or decades, especially with increased intensity. That’s the theory. The problem with rapid and widespread 5G deployment is that no one has studied the long-term impact and knows for sure. Swiss citizens, however, are already noticing short-term impacts that are significant enough to cause general concern.

IN MODERATION

If someone eats, drinks, or smokes in moderation, we mean they do it within reasonable limits, not in excess. The same goes for wireless technologies.

5G may be quite safe as long as transmit power is limited. But limiting power reduces range, meaning more antennae are needed. On the other hand, increasing power extends range, so deployment costs are less. It’s like the difference between whispering and yelling. One is only heard close up. The other can be heard across the house, or stadium.

The problem comes when wireless carriers lobby regulators to crank up the power and signal strength. They can greatly reduce cost, but the tradeoff is increased health risk. Finding the right balance of benefit and public safety is key.

REGULATORY OVERSIGHT

We rely on the FCC to regulate both wireless and wired electronic communications. They set aside radio spectrum for different services (i.e., police, fire, tow trucks, mobile phones, broadcast radio and TV); and besides promoting competition, innovation, and broadband investment, we trust the FCC to ensure public safety and homeland security. The safety part seems, however, to be diminished in recent years in favor of industry profits. At least that’s what the debate is about.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are good examples of how the FCC regulates wireless networks. They both use license-free spectrum at 2.4 GHz frequency, but they must stay within strict limits on transmit power. That’s because 2.4 GHz is the same frequency used in microwave ovens. Ovens use much more energy to heat food with friction caused by vibrating water molecules. They bombard the food with powerful radio waves at the same frequency as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, a natural harmonic of water. Of course the human body is 90% water, hence the concern. So to protect public safety, the FCC drastically limits the power of these wireless networks. Imagine what could happen if you turned up that power well beyond reasonable limits? That’s what people worry about with 5G.

NO LONG-TERM STUDIES

Wireless networks and cellular phones are relatively new, so there are no public safety studies that cover a large population over decades or lifetimes. There is, however, plenty of evidence to show that children may be more adversely affected as their young brains develop.

5G Network Uses Nearly Same Frequency as Weaponized Crowd Control Systems. According to this second article, “Millimeter waves are utilized by the U.S. Army in crowd dispersal guns called Active Denial Systems.”

I share these perspectives not to alarm you but to say there’s enough to be concerned about. With so much profit at stake, and with so much political influence from wealthy network operators rushing to deploy 5G networks, can the general public trust federal regulators to strike the right balance?

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5G MONOPOLY CONTROL (from a previous post)

I also weighed in on a Dallas Morning News article on The Digital Haves and Have-nots, which touted the potential of solving that problem with 5G. Here’s my published Letter to the Editor:

One might think wireless networks would encourage increased competition because radio spectrum can be shared. But with 5G this is not the case, and that can give companies like AT&T a natural monopoly. They’ve had experience with that in the past and are at it again.

AT&T gained a fiber-optic monopoly in the mid-1990s when their lobbyists got a Texas law passed prohibiting municipal fiber networks. Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) forms a natural monopoly. That’s because once a network operator spends the money and effort to connect a fiber with limitless capacity, it becomes virtually impossible for another to enter the market and compete head-on. The high installation costs is one deterrent, and another is the ease of ramping up bandwidth as needed. I was not involved in policy debates back then, but I helped write IBM’s response to a City of Austin RFP seeking a citywide public fiber network. The new law unfortunately scuttled that effort and secured AT&T’s monopoly position.

Years later AT&T tried to get a similar law passed to ban municipal Wi-Fi networks. Thankfully, a small group of citizen activists intervened to kill their bill. I had already retired from IBM but was part of that team’s success.

Now AT&T wants to increase its monopoly power, and with 5G it can. Just as FTTH formed a natural monopoly to homes, 5G offers a natural monopoly to neighborhoods and cities. Because of the higher frequencies and much shorter range, network operators will need right-of-way (ROW) access to utility polls and streetlights for both the fiber connections and the mounting of antennas. Giving multiple network operators such access would make for an ugly mess, so the first to connect will likely have a monopoly.

This could have all been avoided if the network infrastructure were publicly owned. That was the message of a white paper I wrote almost a decade ago. “BIG Broadband: Public Infrastructure or Private Monopolies” started by comparing business model challenges of public and private networks.

“For ISPs [like AT&T] to justify building private networks, they need a large take rate (% of population subscribing) and a large RPU (revenue per user). And because shareholders are impatient and want a quick return on investment, ISPs need monopoly power or only install new fiber infrastructure where they think they can get it.

“Public broadband, on the other hand, is more like airports, where cities can endure a longer payback period than commercial companies, where development funds are raised with long-term bonds that get paid off with ISP access fees, and where both network construction and operation are outsourced.”

As much as I liked the Dallas News article, it failed to mention a few key points about the impact of increased monopoly control. Beyond reducing the market pressures of a competitive environment, to improve service and lower cost, AT&T’s network will significantly worsen the digital divide over time.

Access to high-speed (BIG Broadband) Internet connections is not only important to kids in school but also for adult lifelong learning as employment opportunities obsolete old skills and require ones. It’s important for the future of telework or even applying for a job, because that’s all done online these days. It’s important for commerce with online banking and shopping. And it’s important for healthcare and the ability of new telehealth services to extend coverage and lower costs. I feel that lives and livelihoods are at stake for the pursuit of profit, and political power.