Here are some updates regarding Dafna Tachover’s work and other activities.
My Mar 15, 2022 interview with Dennis Michael Lynch (DML) — link to“The details of 5G Technology and how it may negatively impact your health and privacy” was posted.
This is an interview on a platform that gives exposure to a new audience. Lynch has one of the most popular news platforms and shows. His page has 4 million views per month and he has 1.6 million followers on Facebook.
The interview is great for beginners and “doubters.” In the beginning of the interview DML explains that he was pushed by his producer to cover densified 4G/5G harms. He said that a year ago, he thought Wireless harm from densified 4G/5G infrastructure antennas was just another conspiracy theory. By the end of the interview DML was convinced of the problem and evidence and concluded that likely his headaches are caused by wireless radiation.
March 16 Pittsfield Meeting
On Wed, Mar 16, 2022, Pittsfield Board of Health will meet again. Hopefully, in this meeting the board will vote to adopt and issue a Cease and Desist order against Verizon. On February 2, 2022, after 17 residents, including children, reported becoming injured with various neurological symptoms from the radiation emitted by a cell tower, located in Pittsfield, MA, Pittsfield’s BOH voted to issue a cease and desist order. This was just the decision to adopt a C&D order, not the adoption of an actual order. An order has not been issued yet.
EMF Hazards Summit – Free For 3 Days – Register In Sept 2021, I was one of the speakers in EMF Hazards Summit. Between March 24th – 27th, 2022 you will have a second chance to watch it for free.
The summit was organized by Nick Pineault. It includes 26 top-notch leaders in EMF & health including Dr. Mercola, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Magda Havas, EMF mitigation expert Brian Hoyer and many others.
70,000 people have already watched it. Don’t miss this opportunity to watch it for free! Register Here.
. . . Its Local Laws for Wireless Telecommunications Facilities Amid Litigation from AT&T and Verizon
Adapted from an article by Braden Cartwright, Mar 11, 2022 | Original Daily Post article here.
The city of Los Altos is backing off its strict rules on cell antennas, but Verizon and AT&T aren’t satisfied with the new ordinance. The battle over new cell antennas in Los Altos is playing out in a similar way in cities across the United States. Residents are against the new antennas because they say they are ugly, create noise and emit radio emissions. The cell antennas, or “nodes” are usually installed on top of existing power poles or streetlights, along with a box of equipment mounted to or next to the pole.
In 2019, Los Altos passed an ordinance with broad support banning cell antennas in residential areas and within 500 feet of schools. The Los Altos City Council then rejected 12 applications from AT&T and one from Verizon because they didn’t meet those rules. In response, both cell companies sued in federal court, arguing the denial wasn’t based on evidence.
Wire America: Once again, cities learn the hard lesson over and over how NOT to stand up to the Wireless industry. If Los Altos had just learned how to say no to Wireless Telecommunications Facility (WTF) applications — by citing substantial evidence in the public record — then none of these protections would have needed to be scaled back. Los Altos just shot themselves in the foot and are now capitulating as part of an unspoken settlement agreement in process, that the city could have avoided in the first place by learning from Ian Oglesby, the Mayor of Seaside, who ran a master class in his town on September, 19 2019 on How to Say No to WTF Applications:
That lawsuit is still pending, while consultants hired by the city worked on a new ordinance. The new ordinance, which was reviewed by the Los Altos Planning Commission on Thursday, says that cell nodes can go in residential streets as long as they are near a main road, within 200 to 500 feet. The city is mapped to show where the cell towers are allowed.
Dozens of residents wrote in asking the city to keep its original ordinance and ensure no cell antennas are placed close to schools and homes. The cell towers are visually unappealing, their cooling fans make noise, and they have a “refrigerator’s worth of equipment,” including lithium batteries on wooden poles that could potentially burn down a neighborhood, residents said.
The new ordinance says the city will grant exceptions if a cell company has evidence they need a site in a residential neighborhood to eliminate a significant gap in telecommunications coverage. The company would have to demonstrate, with substantial evidence in the public record, that not putting the antenna at that location would result in an effective prohibition of telecommunications service — a tough row to hoe for Wireless companies because everyone can make a wireless phone call on every carrier network in Los Altos today.
The ordinance has several other restrictions on things like height, noise and Wireless Telecommunications Facility (WTF) design. Attorney Deborah Fox, who is representing the city against AT&T and Verizon, said the ordinance is “state of the art” and she is confident that it meets federal law. But cell companies weren’t satisfied.
Paul Albritton, a lawyer for Verizon, wrote a 10-page letter calling for major parts of the ordinance to be deleted. He said the rules are vague, unreasonable and overstep the city’s authority. The FCC, not Los Altos, determines if cell antennas are needed, Albritton said. Many of the cities prohibitions should instead be preferences, he said. An attorney from AT&T said he had many of the same concerns.
Wire America: these assertions by AT&T and Verizon are simply not true. What else would you expect from companies that are founded on deception at their very cores?
Fox said she doesn’t know what would happen to AT&T and Verizon’s lawsuits if Los Altos passes the new ordinance. She said the city hopes a judge would decide that a ruling is no longer needed, but she suspects that the cell companies will still want a Judge Edward Davila to order their permits be approved.
Davila took motions from both sides without oral arguments in December, and the parties are awaiting a ruling. No court dates have been scheduled.
Case No. 5:20-CV-294-SVK: New Cingular Wireless PCS, LLC d/b/b AT&T Mobility v. City of Los Altos; United States District Court, Northern District of California
Case No. 5:20-CV-386-CV: GTE Mobilnet of California Limited Partnership, a California limited partnership d/b/a VERIZON WIRELESS v. City of Los Altos; United States District Court, Northern District of California
. . . and Apple’s Mar 8, 2022 release of the new iPhone SE proves it. The new iPhone SE was built without millimeter wave antennas, and that uncovers the deception that so-called “small” Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (sWTFs) were ever needed in residential zones . . . THEY WERE NOT!
Adapted from an article By Sean Hollister, Mar 9, 2022 | Original The Verge article here.
Listen for 8 Minutes . . . From the Beginning, 5G Milimeter Wave was a Big, Fat Lie
Nilay Patel at 7:45: the millimeter wave thing “was a lie and now we can all admit it was a lie.”
Nilay Patel digs in some more at 8:15: “I feel very strongly about this . . . I will transmit my energy to you through this microphone.”
Alex Cranz at 8:25: “You are already transmitting more energy than millimeter waves did.”
Nilay Patel at 10:45: “Verizon redefined 5G Ultra wideband . . . now it doesn’t [just] mean millimeter wave, it now means both the C-Band and millimeter wave spectrum . . . sometime in January [2022] Verizon changed the definition.”
Dan Seifert at 11:30: “There was no press release that said 5G Ultra wideband now means C-Band.”
Nilay Patel at 13:50: “It’s been at least ten years of 5G bullshit.”
Dan Seifert at 14:05: “It’s been at least four years of 5G millimeter wave lies.”
Nilay Patel at 16:25: “This new iPhone is proof that all of this fake out was just a lie . . . to raise prices.”
This is mainstream media, folks . . . this is what Wire America has been saying since 2016.
Is Verizon 5G 25-Times Faster? No.
Speed Test Results Reveal a Bait-and-Switch Deception
From May 2018 . . .
From Nov 2020 . . .
Sean Hollister:
When I rejoined The Verge in 2018, my first big assignment looked like an absolute peach — fly to the gorgeous Hawaiian island of Maui, sip cool drinks on the sand (The Verge paid for my trip; we don’t accept junkets), and become one of the first journalists to experience blazing 5G speeds at a Qualcomm event. Instead, I found myself exposing a lie. The first real-world 5G test turned out to be a dud, the speeds misleading at best, covering up the fact Verizon and AT&T’s millimeter-wave (mmWave) 5G wasn’t ready.
For the next three years, Verizon and AT&T successfully employed a fake-it-till-you-make-it strategy, enlisting politicians to help them “win” 5G as if it were some kind of “race.” Their fastest 5G networks ran on a chunk of spectrum called millimeter wave that’s speedy but so spotty you’d barely get a signal without a cell tower directly overhead. Meanwhile, powerful phone makers like Apple were complicit in rebranding LTE networks into things like “5Ge,” helping carriers mislead customers into thinking they’d already rolled out the new networks.
But it now seems the millimeter-wave 5G carriers have been slinging from the start was just a gigantic head fake — a way to stay in the game until their actually useful 5G spectrum was ready — spectrum from Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (WTFs) that do NOT need to be installed on electric utility poles and light poles in residential zones in order to work; just like T-Mobile’s 600 MHz and 2500 MHz spectrum, the C-band (3500-3700 MHz) spectrum can be deployed from equipment installed on existing macro towers. There is no need — at all — for any additional cell towers to be placed, constructed or operated in residential zones for the vast majority of urban and suburban America.The over-hyped, so-called“Race to 5G”was a BIG FAT LIE, from the beginning.
On Tuesday, Apple announced the 2022 iPhone SE, the first 5G iPhone for the United States that lacks millimeter-wave 5G antennas that AT&T and especially Verizon have doggedly insisted on for years. Instead of rejecting that iPhone or insisting that Apple make a special version for its millimeter-wave network, Verizon will simply . . . carry the phone. Verizon spokesperson George Koroneos confirmed to The Verge that the company will stock it in stores.
Why am I making such a big deal about this? You need to understand that things have not been normal in Verizon-land.
Verizon pushed Google to create a version of its budget Pixel 4A 5G that cost $100 more to satisfy the carrier’s ridiculous demand that phones support barely-there millimeter wave service.
All of Apple’s high-end iPhones have had tiny picture windows for millimeter wave if you buy them in the United States, and for what? Personally, I’ve experienced a Verizon mmWave 5G signal with my iPhone mini a total of once.
Those are just the big tech companies: to my knowledge, every other smartphone manufacturer that sells phones in the US has been co-opted into producingexclusive “5G UW” phones for Verizon as well, which has until now meant mmWave. It’s been such a hard rule that when analyst Anshel Sag spotted the phone’s spec sheet, he immediately raised the possibility that Verizon might not carry the new iPhone SE at all.
And yet, it will — because Verizon doesn’t need to pretend it cares about millimeter wave anymore. In fact, the company’s already rebranded away from it. Originally, cellular industry executives told me that millimeter wave was key because 5G needed to wow people with speed. But the joke since day one has been that it’s a scavenger hunt: fast when you find the one street corner where it works, but walk down the street or enter a building, and the signal evaporates.
5G Ultra Wideband is Verizon’s highest performing 5G. Our 5G Ultra Wideband network uses high band (mmWave) spectrum to deliver a top-of-the-line 5G experience.
5G Ultra Wideband is Verizon’s highest performing 5G. Our 5G Ultra Wideband network uses high band (mmWave) and mid-band (C-band) spectrum to deliver a top-of-the-line 5G experience.
Funny, that.
But now that Verizon has reoriented its network around C-band — and invested heavily, $45.4 billion just for the spectrum alone — Verizon has no more reason to push millimeter-wave devices that barely deliver on 5G’s promise. What it needs is for people’s first 5G phone to actually give them a good 5G experience, and that’s exactly what the new iPhone SE is poised to do: those who upgrade from a previous model have the opportunity to go straight from LTE to C-band 5G. It’s one of the first major phones to support C-band out of the box.
I don’t think we’ve seen the end of 5G marketing bullshit, mind you: you may wonder for a long time to come whether you’re actually on Verizon’s C-band or millimeter-wave spectrum because of how the carrier now puts both of them under the same umbrella. There’s still plenty of room for AT&T-esque labeling shenanigans in areas where coverage isn’t as good as a carrier would like it to look, too. That’s been AT&T’s version of the fake-it-until-you-make-it strategy from the start.
But at least we can stop pretending that barely-there millimeter wave is the future. It only took three years, countless billions of dollars, an entirely different chunk of spectrum, and a lot of misdirection to make 5G a consumer reality.
By Brittany Polito, Feb 24, 2022 | Original iBerkshires article here.
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Board of Health on Wed Feb 23 announced that it is moving forward with its cease-and-desist order for Verizon to remove its cell tower at 877 South St. An executive session was held to discuss the details with City Solicitor Stephen Pagnotta.
Chair Bobbie Orsi reported:
“We, through our executive session, had a lively discussion with the city solicitor and have made the decision to not change our intention to move forward with the cease-and-desist order. We will, however, align our resources towards a strategy that will afford us the best possibility of success, and so that will be what we will do next.”
The action was approved in early February. The order was held in abeyance for seven days and if the wireless provider did not agree to have a meeting with the board and demonstrate a desire to cooperate to the board’s satisfaction, it was intended to go into effect.
Board members acknowledged that this action is a long shot and would be expensive to the city if it has to go to court, but they said they felt it is their duty to do everything they can to protect the health of residents.
Since the tower’s construction in August 2020, Alma Street resident Courtney Gilardi has spoken during open microphone about negative health effects from the RF microwave radiation that is being transmitted from and to the antennas on the 115-foot Wireless Telecommunications Facility (WTF). Other residents have also joined her protests.
At the meeting, Gilardi, family members, and a number of neighborhood residents spoke in support of the order and thanked the board for their efforts.
Adapted from an article by Larry Thompson and Warren Vande Stadt, Vantage Point Solutions | Original article here.
4G/5G wireless broadband has neither the capacity nor the cost-effectiveness to address the rural fixed broadband gap.
Much has been written about the phenomenal speeds that fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks will support. Policymakers have speculated that 5G wireless will solve the rural broadband gap and make fiber to the home obsolete.
In fact, 5G is targeted primarily at, and is most effective in, densely populated areas. But because 5G depends on very densely deployed small cells, it is highly unlikely to replace 4G for coverage outside towns and thus will not be a solution for the digital divide that affects those areas. Even within rural community centers, its requirement of “deep fiber” renders it unlikely to be cost-effective for fixed broadband, and it potentially bottlenecks the service at the same time, compared with fiber to the premises (FTTP).
Median broadband speed, which is less than what is “commonly available,” was 41 Mbps in September 2015, an increase of 28 percent over the previous year’s median speed of 32 Mbps. Recent studies show that in 2021, mobile broadband, whether 4G or 5G, has not increased its speed much in seven years (top download speeds are still around 40-50 Mbps).
Can Dense 4G/5G Meet Bandwidth Demands?
Dense 4G/5G has been touted to provide speeds 100 times faster than 4G wireless – as high as 10 Gbps – with latency approaching that of fiber. These speeds indeed “sound” promising . . . but such projections assumes unrealistic conditions and overlook the critical fact that the capacity must be shared among multiple users.
Wireless vendors often promote their products by listing the fastest data connection rates possible. However, these are theoretical rates possible only in a lab environment and only for a single user located very close to an access point and able to utilize every one of the best-case, unimpaired radio channel resources. This is completely unrealistic for real-world dimensioning for capacity, and itoverstates an access point’s practical capacity by 500 percent or more. Actual throughput capacity for wireless users is often only 15 percent of the peak data connection rate – although the peak rate is the speed that providers promote.
An access point cannot deliver peak speeds across its entire coverage area, or cell. The quality of a radio channel, its spectral efficiency (bits per second per hertz) and its data rate ability deteriorate rapidly with distance, falling to half or less of peak at only 25 percent of the distance to the cell edge. This represents roughly only 6 percent of the cell.
To determine a cell’s overall practical capacity for broadband, and thus to evaluate the real capability of any proposed network that leverages wireless technology, one must consider the average of the experience among all users near and far. This is often only 15–25 percent of the theoretical peak for a single user. When overheads are considered, the usable capacity will typically be less than 75 percent of this value. It therefore is not unusual for the actual throughput capacity to be only roughly 15 percent of its peak data connection rate – although the latter is the speed that is usually promoted.
Three Ways to Get More Broadband
Physics limits the evolution of any wireless technology to three methods:
increasing transmit power (or reducing noise),
adding spectrum
reducing the number of users per cell.
1. Increasing Transmit Power or Reducing Noise
Increasing signal level or reducing noise, including interference, enables better data modulation techniques to be deployed. FCC rules do not permit signal levels (transmitter powers) to increase [yet there is no effective policing of power ouput from Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (WTFs)], and noise will only get worse as more and more transmitters are installed. Without improvement in the ratio of signal to the sum of interference plus noise (SINR), higher efficiency modulation techniques will be usable by only a very few users in each cell, very close to the access point.
Providers that use the sub-6 GHz unlicensed bands to offer fixed broadband service today are painfully aware of this. Even with wider channel bandwidths available, they already struggle to support more than just a few subscribers per access point, even at today’s fixed broadband users’ demand levels, because of the increasing use of video and the uncontrollable and rising noise floor in unlicensed spectra. This will only worsen as the use of Wi-Fi for last-few-feet access by portable devices increases, and as “HetNets,” discussed later, emerge.
For all these reasons, sub-6 GHz wireless access points, even if they attempt to use “5G-like” techniques, whether standardized or proprietary, will struggle and likely fall further behind in trying to meet tomorrow’s fixed broadband demands in all but the most remote, sparsely used, short-haul applications. In addition, systems that use any unlicensed spectrum are susceptible to being seriously debilitated by competing systems, which can appear close by without warning and without FCC recourse. This renders them risky choices for delivery of any 5G-like fixed broadband, especially if publicly funded. Any significant improvement in wireless broadband performance, then, requires adding more spectrum in which interference can be rigidly controlled or by reducing the number of users per cell.
2. Adding Spectrum
There is not enough licensed spectrum in the sub-6 GHz bands that traditional 4G sites use today to facilitate larger channel bandwidths. Although some licensed spectrum has been added with the 600 MHz auction, it is only a tiny fraction of what is required to support the 100x improvement requirement for 5G.
The quantity of licensed or rigidly controlled shared spectrum for mobile broadband is slated to improve in the next few years, however. As a result of its “Spectrum Frontiers” vote on July 14, 2016, the FCC intends to release and repurpose for mobile broadband 18 GHz of so-called millimeter-wave (mmW) spectrum – very, very high frequencies (6 GHz to 80 GHz) whose wavelengths are measured in millimeters rather than meters. But these mmW bands have always been available for fixed broadband (some, such as 39 GHz and 80 GHz, only for point-to-point), and to date, they have gone largely unused for this purpose, for good reason.
The higher the frequency of radio spectrum, the less propagation and penetration power it has. Frequencies this high can propagate only to relatively short distances before decaying to unusable levels. In addition, they are highly susceptible to fading because of diffraction by rain and moisture and even absorption by oxygen molecules. The result is that the usable, reliable range of mmW frequencies – even on a clear day – is measured in hundreds of feet, not in miles. This, along with the fact that mmW frequencies do not penetrate buildings or other obstacles, such as foliage, and must have an unobstructed line-of-sight path, renders them of little use for conventional macrocells. For all these reasons, they have not been considered usable to date for fixed broadband.
If networks are densified into smaller and smaller cells to increase capacity by the other means discussed below, then mmW might see increasing use. Even though this may be of great benefit to outdoor-to-outdoor or indoor-to-indoor signals, so-called “small” Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (sWTFs) are not effective for fixed broadband. The mmW signals connect only to outdoor customer premises antennas, not directly to indoor equipment.
Within its tiny range, mmW spectrum will have available channel widths on the order of 10 times as wide as current traditional cellular frequencies – which alone could result in up to a 10x improvement in access point capacity. But the GSM Association touts 5G as having potentially a 100x improvement over 4G, targeting as much as 10 Gbps peak! How can this be possible?
Reusing a frequency in the same place at the same time can give the appearance of more spectrum quantity. In fact, this already is being done with the use of multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) air interfaces. But spectrum reuse comes with diminishing returns.
MIMO can permit portions of a user’s data to be divided into parallel streams between an access point and the user, using the same frequency at the same time. 2×2 MIMO (two antennas each at the access point and the user equipment), which is commonplace today, can nearly double peak throughput speeds but increases overall cell spectral efficiency only by around 160 percent. So-called 4G LTE-Advanced will permit up to 8×8 MIMO, with a nearly 4x corresponding increase in possible peak user throughput compared with 2×2. But in this case, with four times as many antennas, receivers and transmitters, the overall cell spectral efficiency, compared with 2×2, only barely doubles. Cellular carriers are just now employing 4×4 MIMO.
Even advanced forms of MIMO called multiser MIMO will use massive numbers of antennas at a site, can form multiple individual beams to separate users, but again, the improvement in overall throughput goes up only by small fractions of peak theoretical rates.
Another way to add spectrum is through “heterogeneous network” configurations, or “HetNets,” which are being touted for 5G. Development is underway to permit multiple channels among the same or even different frequency bands to be concatenated, carrying additive portions of a user’s data simultaneously. An example is a standard in development called LTE-License Assisted Access, which will concatenate the use of a conventional, licensed cellular LTE channel with LTE deployed on the 5 GHz unlicensed band for best-effort overflow, to the extent the unlicensed channel may be unimpaired and have capacity at the moment. In the meantime, LTE-Unlicensed, a similar but de facto industry standard developed largely by Qualcomm and Verizon, has just been approved by the FCC. T-Mobile intends to implement it immediately to aid in offloading its 4G network. Though useful for wireless carriers, this standard will contribute to overcrowding of the 5 GHz unlicensed band used mostly today for Wi-Fi.
Other standards in development will concatenate completely separate technologies among bands. One example is Licensed Wireless Access, which would concatenate LTE on licensed spectra and Wi-Fi on unlicensed.
All these arrangements, of course, can provide more broadband simply by adding up the capacity of individual streams. There are enormous complexities to interworking and reconciling these dissimilar and competing networks and standards.
3. Reducing the number of users per cell.
The last means of increasing capacity for an entire system is by reducing the number of users per cell. This is accomplished by placing cells closer and closer together so the same capacity once afforded to a large coverage footprint of one cell utilizing a radio channel can be applied many times over with multiple, smaller cells in the same coverage footprint, all reusing that same channel.
This is nothing new. Since first-generation cellular networks, when cells were on 500-foot towers and dozens of miles apart, cells have been placed lower and closer together to reuse available spectrum. Today, 4G cells are typically no more than 100 feet off the ground, except in sparsely populated rural areas. 4G/5G so-called “small” Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (sWTFs) are an extension of this cell-splitting technique.
One cannot improve a system’s overall capacity simply by moving the same cells closer together and serving only customers within the cells’ close-in, high-throughput coverage areas, however. Signal still propagates from an access point to the edge of its otherwise usable coverage, whether it is used or not. Attempts to place cells closer together in this manner will raise the noise floor significantly for neighboring cells and reduce the overall efficiency of the multicell system as a whole. Intersite distance and coverage overlaps must be planned carefully to minimize interference to neighboring cells. Placing cells closer together requires reducing signal power by
lowering transmitter powers,
lowering antenna elevations
tilting antennas radically downward.
Any of these strategies forces the cells to be smaller, shrinking their footprints.
Moving cells closer together is especially difficult if a provider uses currently available sub-6 GHz spectrum that propagates too well for dense small-cell applications. Designs that meet the 5G bandwidth targets and accommodate future mmW ranges have made their coverage areas typically less than 1,000 feet in diameter and placed antennas only about 20 feet off the ground, with equipment deployed on streetlights and utility poles. Some estimates put 5G small-cell deployments at 10 times the number of sites as their current 4G macrocell counterparts.
The hurdles to such a dense deployment include
A vastly increased backhaul requirement for so many cells so close together, particularly the dark fiber optic cable that most current configuration designs require for “fronthaul” (connections between base stations and radio antennas).
All these sites will also need power. Both can be exceedingly difficult to coordinate and accomplish.
In addition, user devices will have to incorporate many bands and have vastly expanded MIMO capabilities. This will require software-tunable, radio frequency (RF) components and antennas.
Dense 4G/5G is NOT GOOD for Fixed Broadband
Let’s assume that 5G will one day be able to achieve its goal of 10 Gbps peak data rate per small cell. Applying the practical cell throughput factor of around 15 percent, this falls to around 1.5 Gbps of likely actual usable throughput available per cell, shared among all users.
This bandwidth, even shared, might seem like a lot compared with today’s typical broadband speed of around 41 Mbps. But again, it is reasonable to expect median wireline broadband speed to approach 100–150 Mbps by 2020 and 1 Gbps by the 5G equipment end of life (2030). In addition, wireline providers, particularly FTTP providers, typically do not have to limit monthly usage to avoid oversubscribing their shared broadband resources.
Today, IP video drives wireless providers to limit oversubscription f shared broadband resources. In days when bursty web-browsing traffic dominated the internet, broadband capacity could be significantly oversubscribed. High-volume data streams (such as video), on the other hand, require constant bit rates, which largely defeats any ability to oversubscribe a resource among active users.
If 1 Gbps is a reasonable household broadband service expectation within the 5G equipment’s service life, then the maximum 5G small-cell throughput expectation of about 1.5 Gbps will be a mediocre, if not very poor, solution for tomorrow’s fixed broadband, with very poor median-to-advertised speed performance. If subscribers’ online versus offline behavior of tomorrow mirrors today’s, and if an oversubscription rate of 5:1 can be maintained for 100–150 Mbps median service, then it would appear that a best-case 5G small cell may be able to serve 10–15 households. However, if just two users are active with a video or another constant-bit-rate application requiring 1 Gbps, the small cell is already in danger of serious congestion and/or will require throughput limiting.
Figure 1 – Spectrum vs. Range (Permitted power per FCC service rules assumed per band)
This figure is intended only to suggest relative ranges and coverage areas among various single-carrier frequencies at a common received signal level (RSL) and noise floor throughout the coverage area, which may be above or below the lowest RSL at which a particular technology can operate, assuming sufficient SINR. Actual range will vary depending upon the actual signal level and quality targeted as well as numerous other factors, including power level transmitted, elevation of transmitter and receiver antennas, directionality, gain and MIMO configuration of both the transmitting and receiving antennas, terrain, clutter, manmade interference, and atmospheric and electromagnetic conditions, among others.
Dense 4G/5G in Rural Areas
The extreme densification and short-haul small-cell ranges necessary to achieve 5G generally will make it usable only in dense urban scenarios. Figure 1 depicts the real-world geographic limitations for small cells in rural environments. Assuming a typical 500-foot coverage radius for small cells, this amounts to approximately 0.03 square miles of coverage for each.
In rural America, where the digital divide is most common today and requires the most effort to overcome, 5G wireless will not be widely viable except possibly in densely populated towns. 5G small cells for any sort of “wireless to the home” deployment offer limited promise, at best, as a widespread solution to rural broadband challenges.
To deliver the high speeds and high capacity that many hope for, 5G requires a fiber optic network very similar to that needed for Fiber to the Premises (FTTP). When one puts fiber so deep into a network, why stop at the small cell rather than at the premises a few hundred feet away? Fiber to the premises allows much higher speeds and availability without the same kinds of capacity limitations.
Assessing Broadband Economics
Wireless carriers are already minimizing the wireless portion of their networks by placing towers closer and closer to customers. Future 5G wireless networks will probably use wireless only in the last 300–500 feet. That is the scenario we consider here and compare with fiber to the premises.
The cost of central office electronics for a 4G network has historically been considerably more than the central office costs associated with an FTTP network.
This will be even more expensive for the 5G core network, but as the electronics are still not well defined, these costs have not been considered in this analysis. The final central office costs for 5G could significantly increase the following cost estimates for the 4G/5G wireless network below – as could the cost of new spectrum, also not considered.
In-Town Capital Expenditures (Capex)
For rural town deployments, a 5G cell could be placed on a small tower or pole such that eight to 12 homes would be reachable within 300–500 feet. This pole could be a light pole or other structure in an alleyway or on the street. In a 5G wireless network, this cell is served by fiber from a central office or cabinet. This architecture is not unlike an FTTP network, in which the last pedestal is connected by fiber back to the central office (or cabinet) and may also serve eight to 12 customers. The primary difference is the drop, or last connection into the customer premises. For a 5G network, the drop is an RF signal from the pole, and for an FTTP network, it is a fiber optic cable from the last pedestal.
The cost to construct fiber from a central office to a pole for a 5G cell is similar to the cost of constructing fiber from a central office to the last pedestal in an FTTP network. The differences in cost are primarily in the last 300–500 feet (the drop).
The cost for FTTP electronics, battery backup, grounding and installation is about $750 per household. A wireless network also requires a battery backup as well as electronics and grounding at the customer premises. The wireless electronics converts the RF to Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Because the higher frequencies used for 5G networks do not penetrate obstacles, a pole may need to be installed to avoid trees or other buildings. Because of this, wireless electronics are often more expensive than FTTP electronics. Tree cover and other factors can dramatically increase the cost of 5G electronics installation at a customer location.
The cost for materials and labor to install a fiber drop is typically $5 per foot (for buried or aerial). As the average fiber drop length in a town environment is 150 feet, the cost is amazingly the same, about $750 per customer. Therefore, the comparative costs are these:
$6,000 to $10,000 to install fiber drops to all eight to 12 customers on a city block
$30,000 to $50,000 for a typical 4G/5G sWTF cell site.
The 4G/5G sWTF cell site cell site will also require the additional costs of commercial power and batteries if the wireless network is expected to work during a power outage.
Rural Capital Expenditures
Outside towns, customer density is measured per square mile, not per city block. For a 5G wireless network with a wireless drop length of only 500 feet, each customer will need a dedicated cell site. Therefore, the cost for the tower and electronics cannot be spread across eight to 12 customers as in the town example. The cell site will cost $30,000–$50,000 per customer. The fiber drop in a rural environment is also longer (it may be 500 feet on average). A 500-foot drop that costs $5 per foot to install could cost $2,500. Even though this drop cost is more than in a town environment, it is obviously far less than the cost to install a 5G cell site to serve a single customer.
Operating Expenditures
Apart from the initial capital expense advantage that FTTP appears to have, it likely also has operational expense savings.
Customer premises electronics: Although FTTP and the 5G networks both have electronics and a battery at the customer premises, the FTTP electronics likely have a longer useful life because their broadband capability is more than 100 times greater than the 5G electronics.
Equipment maintenance: The wireless network requires an external antenna that could be obstructed by the growth of a tree or other new structure or that requires careful alignment and can become misaligned during a windstorm.
Power: A 5G wireless broadband network requires commercial power at every cell site. If each cell site serves, on average, 10 locations, there would be 2,000 cell sites in a town with 20,000 locations. Each will incur the initial cost of installing commercial power and will also have a monthly recurring cost. In contrast, the FTTP broadband network is completely passive between the central office and the customer premises and requires no power.
Replacement cost: A 5G wireless local loop uses electronics that normally depreciate over seven years. The FTTP local loop uses fiber optic cable that depreciates over 20–30 years. Even with higher loop costs for the 5G wireless network, the wireless loop will likely need to be replaced three times during the life of the FTTP loop, which will raise the cost even more.
Conclusion
As the 5G wireless network is more expensive for the initial capex as well as opex and provides 1 percent of the broadband speed and capacity available on an FTTP network, it is unlikely to be a good investment if used only for fixed broadband services.
So the conclusion initially drawn in Vantage Point’s March 2015 paper on 4G still holds: “Wireless networks are needed for low-bit-rate mobile applications, such as voice, text and email. In contrast, wireline networks are required to meet customers’ high-speed, fixed broadband needs. For most customers, wireless technologies will not be a replacement for, but rather a complement to, wireline broadband technologies.”
Larry Thompson is CEO and Warren Vande Stadt is senior technology leader of Vantage Point Solutions, a broadband engineering and consulting company based in South Dakota. Contact Larry at larry.thompson@vantagepnt.com.
A Verizon contract crew updates a cell tower for 4G/5G networks in Orem, Utah, on Dec 10, 2019.
It’s time to say goodbye to 3G, the wireless technology that gave our phones near-instantaneous access to the web and helped make everything from the Apple App Store to Uber an everyday part of our lives. More than two decades after its launch, wireless service providers are shutting down 3G to clear the way for its faster and flashier successor: 5G.
The expansion of 5G is welcome news for the growing number of people with 5G-enabled devices, and it could be a critical step toward more advanced technologies, like self-driving cars and virtual reality. But the 3G shutdown will also disable an entire generation of tech: everything from 3G phones to car crash notification systems. For the people who rely on these devices, this transition will cut off a cellular network they’ve depended on for years, and in some cases, disconnect crucial safety equipment.
“The number of 3G devices has been decreasing steadily,” Tommaso Melodia, the director of Northeastern’s Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things, told Recode. “Now it’s at the point where carriers are starting to say, ‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to continue to use these precious frequency channels for 3G. Let’s turn it off.’”
Ideally, wireless providers could keep both 3G and 5G networks up and running, but the physics of the radio spectrum that cellular technology relies on means that companies have to make a choice. The radio spectrum includes a wide range of frequencies, which are used to connect everything from AM/FM radios to wifi networks, and is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Because there are a limited number of frequencies the agency sets aside for cellular service, wireless providers have to divide up the spectrum that they’re allocated to run multiple networks, including their 3G, 4G, 5G, and eventually 6G, services.
The FCC does make new bands of frequencies available to wireless providers through spectrum auctions, during which wireless providers can bid on rights to specific bands. But winning bids can be in the billions of dollars, so providers try to use the spectrum they already have as efficiently as possible. By turning off older generations of cellular technology, companies can repurpose the frequencies in order to improve newer networks, like 4G and 5G. AT&T will go first and shut down its 3G network on February 22, followed by T-Mobile in July and Verizon at the end of the year.
Not everyone will be affected by the 3G shutdown. Many of the cell-phones manufactured in the past few years include hardware that can connect not only to 3G networks but also to 4G and 5G, so they won’t be impacted. But there are still some phones that only work with 3G networks. Once 3G goes offline, these devices won’t be able to connect to a cellular network, which means they won’t be able to send texts, make phone calls, or access the internet without wifi. Any emergency alarm service that depends on 3G will also stop working. These include certain medical and security alarms, as well as some voice assistants, navigation software, and entertainment systems built into cars. Older Kindles, iPads, and Chromebooks designed to connect to 3G networks will be affected, too.
While the 3G shutdown will come with its own set of consequences, the expansion of more advanced networks should bring better speeds and reception to customers with 4G and 5G devices. 4G is 500 times faster than 3G, according to Verizon, and 5G should be even faster than 4G once it’s fully turned on. 5G will also come with lower latency, which means you’ll have very little lag when you’re connected to the internet. This lower latency will make it easier to use your phone for complicated tasks in real time, like playing an online video game or participating in a live telehealth session.
In the meantime, 3G device owners need to brace for the imminent 3G shutdown. Some may not even know their service is about to go offline. Depending on their provider, these customers may only have a few weeks or months to upgrade their tech. Right now, it’s not clear they’ll be able to make the switch in time.
Why Wireless Cos. Won’t Allow 3G & 4G/5G to Work Together?
When your phone connects to a cellular network, it sends and receives signals on the frequencies to which that specific network has been assigned. Those signals travel over those frequencies to transmission stations, like cell towers, which are connected to the internet cables that provide your web connection. This is similar to the way a laptop connects to a home wifi network that’s powered by an internet router.
In the US, 3G generally runs between 850 megahertz and 1900 to 2100 megahertz frequencies. These sections of the spectrum are useful for both digital voice and internet data, which is what made 3G so exciting when it was first introduced in the late 1990s. Wireless carriers have since developed new equipment and better technology, which they’ve used to launch their 4G and 5G networks. Because these networks can carry more data at a faster rate, wireless providers want to run them on the frequencies they currently use for their 3G networks. And that can only happen if they turn 3G off first.
Apple employees applaud the launch of the iPhone 3G at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York City on July 11, 2008
“It’s a one-or-the-other choice,” said Kevin Ryan, a professor who researches wireless systems at the Stevens Institute of Technology. “It would be analogous to trying to have two FM radio stations broadcasting at the same frequency.”
Aside from the logistics of how radio spectrum works, wireless providers are also reallocating 3G spectrum because it makes more financial sense for them. Verizon and AT&T estimate that less than 1 percent of their service still runs on 3G networks, while 90 million 5G devices shipped in the last year alone. Once 3G is finally turned off, wireless providers can devote more resources to expanding their 5G networks and convincing customers to upgrade their service plans.
“Operators are spending a lot of money for the spectrum, and they have to pass those costs on to the consumers. That’s why we pay a very high price for cellphone service,” explains Sundeep Rangan, the associate director of the NYU Wireless technology research center. “Those operators, for that amount of spectrum, want to send as much data, or serve as many users, as possible.”
Carriers stopped selling 3G devices years ago, and many have spent the past several months notifying their remaining 3G customers that it’s time to upgrade their tech. 3G isn’t the first network to go offline, either. 1G, the cellular network that supported analog voice devices, like the brick-sized cellphones in ’80s movies — hasn’t been operational for decades. Though T-Mobile still supports 2G devices, Verizon and AT&T both shut down their 2G networks several years ago. By the end of 2022, 3G will be gone, too.
Prepare for the Coming 3G Shutdown
We don’t know exactly how many, but millions of operational devices throughout the US could be left unconnected when 3G sunsets. Many of these devices include hardware that can’t be adapted to connect to 4G and 5G networks. If you have one of these devices, you should have already heard from your wireless provider about your next steps. But if you want to double-check, you can research your specific device or reach out to your wireless provider. You can also try checking your phone’s settings or user manual, or just keep an eye out for a 4G or 5G connection on your device as you go about your day.
The 3G technology systems that are built into cars are generally supported by a major wireless provider, and they’ll stop working whenever that provider officially shuts down its 3G service. CNBC and Consumer Reports have released lists of known affected car models, but there’s no reason not to check with your car’s manufacturer just in case. Cars built in the mid-2010s appear to be the most likely to be affected by the 3G shutdown, but even some cars released in 2020 may need an upgrade.
There are also 3G devices that are meant for emergencies. Along with some medical and security alert systems, prepaid 3G phones and deactivated 3G phones, which can only call 911, will go offline. Elderly people, people who live in rural areas, low-income people, people experiencing homelessness, and survivors of domestic violence are more likely to rely on these devices. Because people only turn to these devices in extreme circumstances, they may not realize until long after 3G shuts down that they need to be replaced, creating a potentially critical safety issue.
That’s why some think that 3G should stay online for a while longer. AARP says the pandemic has prevented many older people from updating their tech, and wants the shutdown pushed back to the end of the year. Alarm companies, including those that manufacture fire and carbon monoxide detectors and home security systems, have also asked for an extension. They say that the computer chip shortage has gotten in the way of their efforts to produce and install replacement devices.
Inevitably, history shows that cellular networks come and go. The next cellular network, 6G, may be less than a decade away.
By Doug Dawson, Jan 18, 2022 | Orginal POTs and PANS article here.
One of the most annoying aspects of the current federal broadband grants is the ability of incumbent ISPs to challenge the validity of grant requests. In the typical challenge, the incumbents claim that they are offering fast broadband and that an applicant should not be able to overbuild them.
This is another issue that can be laid squarely at the feet of the lousy FCC broadband maps. ISPs are largely free to claim any broadband speeds they want, and grant challenges give them a lever in situations like these grants. The challenges put a burden on anybody filing for a grant since they must somehow prove that incumbent broadband speeds are slower than 25/3 Mbps.
This is not new behavior by the incumbents. You might recall that before the RDOF auction in 2020 that Frontier and CenturyLink together tried to claim they were delivering speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps to tens of thousands of additional Census blocks. The goal was to eliminate these locations from the RDOF auction so that the telcos could preserve their broadband monopoly. The FCC largely rejected the last-minute changes by the telcos. There were already huge areas where telco speed capabilities were overstated before RDOF. The result was that a huge number of Census blocks were incorrectly kept out of the RDOF auction.
A recent article by Karl Bode for Community Networks highlights some specific examples of challenges bogging down the current round of NTIA broadband grants. He cites the example of a grant application made in Grafton County, New Hampshire, where the incumbents challenged the speeds for 3,000 Census blocks in a grant covering 4,000 blocks.
Grafton County had collected speed tests that showed that existing broadband speeds are mostly far below the 25/3 Mbps threshold. But this still puts the burden on the grant applicant to somehow document broadband speeds for each of the many Census blocks. The incumbent ISPs are using the challenges to weaponize the lousy data included in the FCC’s broadband maps.
This is often a ludicrous situation. Applicants like Grafton County are seeking to build fiber broadband because it has already heard repeatedly from residents about the poor broadband in the area. There are easy and obvious fixes to this. One simple fix would be that grants that ask to build fiber over existing DSL should be free from challenges. There is no place in rural America where DSL is delivering adequate broadband.
Another easy fix would be to stop talking about 25/3 Mbps as a meaningful definition of broadband. If these grants only allowed challenges for claims of 100/20 Mbps, then all of the challenges from telcos would be neutered. But there would still be battles like seen by Grafton County, where the cable companies are delivering slow speeds and challenging the grants. Setting the definition of broadband to a faster speed, even if only for the purposes of these grants, would eliminate the wasted energy being taken in handing out grant funding. The folks taking the most of brunt of these challenges are the folks in the various broadband grant offices. The shame of the challenge process is that there probably are some legitimate challenges being made, but they get lost in the huge volume of harassment challenges.
Unfortunately, these challenges are in place for a reason that surprises nobody. When the legislation enabling grants comes through Congress, the incumbents get to sneak innocuous-sounding language into the grant rules that is then manifested in chaos during the grant process. Unfortunately, the upcoming BEAD grant rules include a challenge process, so we’re going to get to see this process repeated. If there were a huge number of challenges in the $288 million NTIA grant program, it’s not hard to imagine what we’re going to see with the $42.5 billion BEAD grant program that’s granting 150 times more in funding.
News from Jan 19, 2022: David Grimes, PhD is Not Affiliated with the University of Oxford
Microwave News has now learned that David Grimes is not currently affiliated with Oxford University.
“David Grimes has no formal affiliation with the Department of Oncology in Oxford. Whilst it is not clear exactly when the articles in question were conceived it seems unlikely that a formal affiliation existed at that time,” according to Professor Mark Middleton, head of the Department of Oncology.
Still unclear is whether Grimes will now be forced to retract his review paper in JAMA Oncology or any his other papers in which he also claimed an Oxford affiliation.
Open Letter to Editor-in-Chief, AMA Journals | Find the original from Microwave News here.
January 18, 2022
Phil B. Fontanarosa, MD, MBA Interim Editor-in-Chief Journal of the American Medical Association and the JAMA Network
Dear Dr. Fontanarosa,
As you are already keenly aware, on December 9, 2021, JAMA Oncology, part of the AMA family of journals, published what purports to be a review of radiofrequency (RF) microwave radiation exposures and cancer by David Robert Grimes.
Grimes’s paper is rife with distortions and omissions. It is a disservice to the AMA and to all those who care about public health. I urge you, as the current editor-in-chief of all AMA journals, to retract this paper.
Here are four reasons why you should set the record straight as soon as possible:
Grimes gets the science wrong.
Grimes is not qualified to write the review.
Grimes’s affiliation with Oxford University is tenuous, at best.
Grimes misreports his statements on behalf of the telecom industry in the published conflict of interest (CoI) disclosure.
1. The Science
First and most important, Grimes makes a hash of the science of RF microwave radiation and cancer. I spelled out some of Grimes’s errors — both of commission and of omission — in a December 14 letter to Dr. Nora Disis, the editor of JAMA Oncology. In short, Grimes misrepresents RF microwave radiation epidemiology and toxicology. Even Grimes’s handling of the physics of RF microwave radiation mechanisms of interactions is so simplistic that it would be out of place in an introductory-level college course.
Dr. Disis replied that JAMA journals “reserve retractions for articles that have been fabricated, falsified or plagiarized,” and that, “There does not appear to be evidence of such misconduct in this article.”
I believe that Grimes’s review is so one-sided that it qualifies as both falsification and fabrication. It might as well have been plagiarized from a telecom industry position paper.
2. The Qualifications
I cannot understand why JAMA Oncology would select a person trained in physics to review the complex medicine and biology of RF microwave radiation interactions for an expert or a lay audience. Grimes has no apparent qualifications in epidemiology or toxicology. He has cultivated a much higher profile as a crusading journalist than as a research scientist.
As I pointed out in my letter to Dr. Disis, Grimes makes assertions that run counter to statements from organizations widely considered to be gold standards in this field, including the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP).
Grimes’s dismissal, without a citation, of NTP’s $30 million RF-microwave radition exposure animal study —which concluded that there is “clear evidence” of a link to cancer — is as inexplicable as it is inexcusable.
3. The Oxford Affiliation
Grimes represents himself as affiliated with the Department of Oncology at U.K.’s University of Oxford. Repeated efforts — by myself and others — have failed to confirm this.
University officials at Oxford have remained silent on the question of Grimes’s status. When I asked the press office, no one responded. I am aware of similar requests for clarification sent to senior academic officials, including Professor Mark Middleton, the head of the oncology department. These too have gone unanswered.
On his LinkedIn page, Grimes states that he was a postdoctoral research associate at Oxford for nearly five years ending in February 2017, when he transitioned to what he calls a “Visiting Research Fellow.” I have been unable to find a public acknowledgement of this appointment on the Oxford website or anywhere else.
During his postdoc, Grimes was mentored by Mike Partridge of the Oxford Institute of Radiation Oncology (OIRO). Partridge left Oxford some years ago and at last word was surveying bird colonies in the Orkney Islands, off the northeast coast of Scotland.
If it exists at all, my guess is that Grimes’s visiting fellowship is some kind of courtesy title, perhaps allowed by Partridge in 2017 as a favor when Grimes left Oxford, a perk from the old-boy network. Today, close to five years after the end of his postdoc, is it appropriate for Grimes to be using an Oxford affiliation? If not, does this qualify as a “fabrication”? It should.
To see if there might be some justification for Grimes’s use of this affiliation in JAMA Oncology, I consulted Oxford’s “Publication and Authorship” policies. It states, in part:
“Only staff or students of the collegiate University, or those who have a formal affiliation to the University or a College (or those who were University staff or students, or had a formal affiliation when the research in question was conducted), should state in any journal submission that they are affiliated to the University or a College.”
Grimes would need to have had a “formal affiliation” with Oxford during the first part of 2021 when he was preparing his review for JAMA Oncology. If he did have such an affiliation, why has no one at Oxford stepped forward to clarify Grimes’s status?
4. The Confict-of-Interest Disclosure
There is no better example of Grimes’s propensity to mislead than his disclosure on conflicts of interest (CoI) appended to his JAMA Oncology review. It states, in part:
“Dr Grimes has … also appeared in an informational video for Vodafone UK countering the fallacious connection between 5G and COVID-19 and donated these fees to Médecins Sans Frontières.”
As I wrote to Dr. Disis last month, this Confict-of-Interest statement is a misrepresentation to the point of deception. The “informational video” does much more than counter baseless links between 5G and COVID.
The video, titled 5G and Health: Everything You Need To Know, features only Grimes. Just 20 seconds of the video is on 5G and COVID. What follows over the next two minutes is full-blown endorsement of the safety of 5G wireless technology.
Grimes says to the camera:
“There have been thousands of studies looking into this and the global consensus is that 5G poses no threat to health,”
This is a total fabrication. It’s nothing more than industry propaganda. The fact is that there are very few studies on 5G and health. Not thousands, not hundreds, not dozens, just a handful of preliminary reports.
Indeed, on January 7, 2022, soon after I wrote to Dr. Disis, a paper on 5G and health was posted online by the International Journal of Radiation Biology, a leading journal in the field. The authors point out that they were unable to find a single human experimental study on the effects of 5G radiation. There is an “urgent need for theoretical and experimental investigations of health effects by 5G,” they conclude.
Dr. Disis has refused to publish my four-page letter to the editor, offering instead an opportunity to publish a maximum of 400 words —which Grimes could then rebut with 500 words. A decision you reiterated in a January 4th follow-up email.
I declined. I simply cannot correct all of Grimes’s distortions in such a short letter.
You and Dr. Disis have both told me that if I don’t submit such a letter, you will consider the matter of Grimes’s review closed after January 9th, 2022, a month following its publication in JAMA Oncology. I hope you will reconsider.
At the very least, Dr. Fontanarosa, I ask you to contact Oxford and watch the Vodafone video. I can understand your reluctance to wade into the 50-year scientific controversy over RF microwave radiation and cancer, but Grimes’s misrepresentation of both his Oxford affiliation and his work for the telecom industry strike at the heart of what you describe as your “journal’s standards.”
After all, would JAMA Oncology have entertained a review of the RF microwave radiation controversy by an assistant professor at a mid-level Irish University — one who has cultivated a reputation as a combative journalist rather than as a objective scientist — had Grimes not played the Oxford card?
I continue to urge that JAMA Oncology retract Grimes’s paper and that the JAMA Network initiate a formal investigation of the peer review process that led to its publication.
Sincerely,
Louis Slesin Editor, Microwave News
P.S. I should note that Grimes has refused to respond to my questions about this or anything else.
By DAVID KOENIG, AP Airlines, Jan 18 2022 | Original Bakersfield Now article here.
The airline industry is raising the stakes in a showdown with AT&T and Verizon over plans to launch 5G wireless service this week, warning that thousands of flights could be grounded or delayed if the rollout takes place near major airports.
CEOs of the nation’s largest airlines say that interference from the wireless service on a key instrument on planes is worse than they originally thought.
“To be blunt, the nation’s commerce will grind to a halt unless the service is blocked near major airports, the CEOs said in a letter Monday to federal officials including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has previously taken the airlines’ side in the matter.”
AT&T and Verizon plan to activate their new 5G wireless service Wednesday after two previous delays from the original plan for an early December rollout. The new high-speed 5G service uses a segment of the radio spectrum (C-Band: 3,500 MHz to 3,700 MHz) that is close to that used by altimeters, which are devices that measure the height of aircraft above the ground.
AT&T and Verizon say their equipment will not interfere with aircraft electronics, and that the technology is being safely used in many other countries. However, the CEOs of 10 passenger and cargo airlines including American, Delta, United and Southwest say that 5G will be more disruptive than they originally thought because dozens of large airports that were to have buffer zones to prevent 5G interference with aircraft will still be subject to flight restrictions announced last week by the Federal Aviation Administration. They add that those restrictions won’t be limited to times when visibility is poor.
The airline CEOs wrote:
“Unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and shipping public will essentially be grounded. This means that on a day like yesterday, more than 1,100 flights and 100,000 passengers would be subjected to cancellations, diversions or delays.”
The airline CEOs asked that the new 5G be barred within two miles of airport runways. AT&T and Verizon declined to comment. A trade group for the telecom industry, CTIA, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The showdown between two industries and their rival regulators — the FAA and the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees radio spectrum — now threatens to further disrupt the aviation industry, which has been hammered by the pandemic for nearly two years.
This was a crisis that was years in the making. The airline industry and the FAA say that they have tried to raise alarms about potential interference from 5G C-Band but the FCC has ignored them. The telecoms, the FCC and their supporters argue that C-Band and aircraft altimeters operate far enough apart on the radio spectrum to avoid interference. They also say that the aviation industry has known about C-Band technology for several years but did nothing to prepare — airlines chose not to upgrade altimeters that might be subject to interference, and the FAA failed to begin surveying equipment on planes until the last few weeks.
AT&T and Verizon spent billions of dollars for C-Band spectrum in a government auction run by the FCC, then spent billions more to build out new networks. In response to concern by the airlines, they agreed to delay launching the service from early December until early January. Late on New Year’s Eve, Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson asked the companies for another delay, warning of “unacceptable disruption” to air service.
AT&T CEO John Stankey and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg rejected the request in a letter that had a scolding, even mocking tone. But they had second thoughts after intervention that reached the White House. They agreed to the second, shorter delay but implied that there would be no more compromises.
That was followed by a deal in which the telecoms agreed to reduce the power of their networks near 50 airports for six months. In exchange, the FAA and the Transportation Department promised not to further oppose the rollout of 5G C-Band. President Joe Biden praised the deal, but the airlines weren’t satisfied with the agreement, regarding it as a victory for the telecoms that didn’t adequately address their concerns about trying to land planes at airports where the new service would be active.
By Jayna Locke, July 22, 2021 | Orginal Digi International article here.
Check for a License for the 700 MHz frequency Band 14 in your county here.
What Is FirstNet®?
FirstNet® is a cellular network communications system designed to deliver priority and pre-emptive communications for first responders and other organizations involved in critical infrastructure and public health and safety. Developed in a public-private collaboration between the First Responder Network Authority and AT&T, the network is built to close communications gaps in public emergencies.
The key objective for FirstNet® is to handle maximum first responder traffic even during a peak emergency. Since FirstNet can only be used by those with a specialized device, there is almost no risk of the network going down or for network congestion by non-FirstNet users. This robust design makes it a cornerstone of strategic planning for smart cities.
While communications with emergency responders are critical at any time, the stakes are especially high during catastrophic events that affect a large population. When a city, region, state or the nation experiences a natural disaster or a terrorist attack — most memorably, events such as the 9/11 disaster, Hurricane Katrina and the Boston bombing — cellular networks can quickly become overloaded, preventing dispatchers and first responders from communicating quickly and effectively.
If you are responsible for critical communications in a municipality, in which police stations, fire stations, and other emergency service providers depend on cellular networks for communications, today you have the opportunity to improve your city’s disaster preparedness with FirstNet communications.
Many other organizations qualify too, including hospitals, ambulance services and a second tier of services known as “extended primary.” These include critical infrastructure systems and services such as water treatment plants, the power grid and security services.
What Is Band 14, and How Does It Work?
The need for a first responder network with dedicated spectrum was recognized in the wake of September 11th 2001, after first responders found it difficult to communicate on the congested cellphone network. In 2012, Congress passed the Spectrum Act. This act set aside 20 MHz of highly desirable spectrum in the 700 MHz frequency band, known as Band 14, which was to be reserved exclusively for emergency communications. Low-band spectrum like the 700 MHz band provides several advantages, including the ability to better penetrate walls and other obstacles. It helps to ensure excellent coverage.
It has been less than ten years since the Spectrum Act was passed, but already the FirstNet network can be accessed by 99% of the U.S. population. This rapid expansion in coverage can be attributed to AT&T’s strategy to give FirstNet users access to all bands on the AT&T network with priority and pre-emption over non-FirstNet users. This means that if there is a signal, FirstNet users will have coverage, even in remote areas where Band 14 may not be deployed yet.
Who Owns FirstNet and Band 14?
FirstNet is owned by the First Responder Network Authority, an independent authority within the U.S. Department of Commerce. Chartered in 2012, its mission is to ensure the building, deployment, and operation of the nationwide broadband network that equips first responders to save lives and protect U.S. communities.
Band 14 is maintained through a public and private collaboration. The Spectrum Act allocated about $7 billion to kickstart construction. However, a majority of the funding comes from AT&T. Over the course of 25 years, it is expected that AT&T will spend in upwards of $40 billion to build and operate Band 14.
In exchange, AT&T can run normal commercial traffic across the band when everything is working properly. However, in the event of an emergency, AT&T will give FirstNet® users priority and pre-emption over non-FirstNet users and, if necessary, drop all commercial traffic and dedicate the network exclusively to first responders, along with the extended primary group as bandwidth allows. For this reason, a normal cellphone might stop working during a crisis, but a FirstNet-enabled device will continue to work.
How Do I Qualify for FirstNet and Band 14?
The idea behind FirstNet is for important first responders, city services and infrastructure to continue functioning in the event of an emergency. Given that mandate, the list of FirstNet approved organizations is broad. In fact, many organizations are surprised to find they qualify.
For example, drilling and gas wells all qualify for FirstNet, as do Internet connected irrigation systems, waste disposal and septic tank services. Both short and long haul railroad carriers can use the network, as can the postal service and other private postal carriers.
It is worth investigating, if you think that your company or organization might qualify.
What Devices Support FirstNet and Band 14?
When it comes to FirstNet compatibility, there are two categories of devices:
Products that meet FirstNet requirements, pass certifications, and support all FirstNet features and support band 14. These are known as FirstNet Ready™.
Products that meet FirstNet requirements, pass certifications, and support all FirstNet features but do not support band 14. These do not have a FirstNet Ready designation.
For best FirstNet performance, you want to select a device that is FirstNet Ready™.
Some of Samsung’s Band 14 compatible devices include the Galaxy S10, Galaxy Note9, Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy Tab S4 tablet. These top-of-the-line phones are a far cry from the hefty bricks that one might associate with emergency backup communications.
Various models of the Apple iPhone can also access the network. The iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR can connect to the FirstNet network, as can iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro.
Infrastructure Systems that Support FirstNet and Band 14 Communications
While it’s important for individual police officers, fire fighters and EMTs to have a Band 14-enabled cellphone, perhaps nothing is more important than a FirstNet Ready™ cellular router. These devices can provide the communications backbone to ensure that an entire hospital, police station, power plant or water treatment facility remains connected to the Internet in an emergency.
The IoT supports critical communications for public safety services, hospitals and first responders. Smart traffic management systems depend on high data throughput and the most reliable communications networks, as these systems are critical for everything from daily traffic management and emergency vehicle routing to a city-wide evacuation.
Digi has a growing offering of devices that are certified for operation on the FirstNet® network. The FirstNet Ready™ Digi TX54 cellular router is designed for these mission-critical applications, functioning as a central communications gateway for smart traffic management systems and Band 14 communications. This robust, secure device is designed to withstand tough conditions, support multiple connectivity requirements simultaneously and maintain the fastest connections with the highest availability.
Today, Digi is working with municipalities across the U.S. to deploy the critical FirstNet Band 14 communications backbone to support emergency response, smart traffic management systems and future connected vehicles. Contact us to learn more about how these systems can support your city’s critical communications.
Expanding Band 14 Across Public Health and Safety
Congress mandated the deployment of FirstNet Band 14 to ensure critical communications occur without delays during a disaster. To that end, the U.S. government would like to see as many critical infrastructure organizations and emergency service providers connected and prepared as possible. If you think that your institution may qualify for a Band 14 connection don’t wait. Make sure you’re prepared for the unforeseen in your city.
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