Year: 2018

by Angelina Panettieri, Natrional League of Cityies, 202-626-3196, panettieri@nlc.org | Original article here.

The National League of Cities urges its members to immediately contact their Members of Congress, particularly Senators who sit on the Senate Commerce Committee, and URGE STRONG OPPOSITION to S.3157.

• Link to S.3157 bill text
• Link to S.3157 actions
• Link to side-by-side comparison of proposed changes to 1996 TCA — Section 704
• Link to roster of Senate Commerce Committee
• Link to NLC form to send letters to your elected Senators and Representatives; please substitute your own letter text before clicking send.

On June 28, Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the Streamlining The Rapid Evolution And Modernization of Leading-Edge Infrastructure Necessary to Enhance Small Cell Deployment Act or STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act (S.3157). The bill is focused, much like the recent FCC rulemaking efforts, on limiting the actions local governments can take on small cell wireless facility siting in an effort to make deployments cheaper, faster, and more consistent across jurisdictions.

While the FCC’s statutory authority to take these actions is questionable and can be easily challenged in court, congressional action to limit local authority would be permanently damaging. The bill would severely limit the ability of local governments in states without preemptive state small cell laws to govern wireless siting and would complicate implementation of new small cell laws in states that have passed them.

Continue reading “Sen. Thune Introduces Discriminatory and Preemptive Small Cell Bill”

Why does the Media dismiss claims about mobiles being bad for our health? Is that because studies showing a link to cancer have been cast into doubt by the industry?

by Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie; Sat July 14, 2018 | Original “The Guardian” article here.

On 28 March this year, the scientific peer review of a landmark United States government study concluded that there is “clear evidence” that radiation from mobile phones causes cancer, specifically, a heart tissue cancer in rats that is too rare to be explained as random occurrence.

Eleven independent scientists spent three days at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, discussing the study, which was done by the National Toxicology Program of the US Department of Health and Human Services and ranks among the largest conducted of the health effects of mobile phone radiation. NTP scientists had exposed thousands of rats and mice (whose biological similarities to humans make them useful indicators of human health hazards) to doses of radiation equivalent to an average mobile user’s lifetime exposure.

The peer review scientists repeatedly upgraded the confidence levels that the NTP’s scientists and staff had attached to the study, fueling critics’ suspicions that the NTP’s leadership had tried to downplay the findings. Thus the peer review also found “some evidence” – one step below “clear evidence” – of cancer in the brain and adrenal glands.

Not one major news organization in the US or Europe reported this scientific news. But then, news coverage of mobile phone safety has long reflected the outlook of the wireless industry.

Continue reading “The Inconvenient Truth About Cancer and Mobile Phones”

By Kaitlyn Mensing, Legal Intern and David Andrews, Ph.D., Senior Scientist
July 9, 2018 | Original article here.

The wireless communications industry is rushing to blanket the nation with next-generation networks (marketed as 4G/5G densification, which will use a panoply of frequencies from 600 MHz to 90,000 MHz). Despite studies linking radiation from existing networks to cancer in lab animals, the Federal Communications Commission and many state legislatures are bowing to industry lobbyists and clearing the way for the 4G/5G densification.

The FCC recently voted to exclude 4G/5G Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (WTFs) from review under federal environmental and historic preservation laws, but the FCC was promptly sued by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and four Native American tribes. Meanwhile, almost two dozen states have passed laws, pushed by wireless lobby groups, to override local ordinances that would regulate the siting of these new base stations, which could be installed on nearly every telephone pole in the U.S. Some states are considering similar legislation, while others, such as California, have vetoed bills designed to remove local rights in order to streamline the installation of Close Proximity Microwave Radiation Antenna – Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (CPMRA-WTFs).

Continue reading “Despite Health Hazards, FCC and (Uninformed States) Promote 4G/5G Densification”

. . . and Senate Democrats should sue to enforce it.

By Ken Levy, opinion contributor — 07/08/18 | Original The Hill article here.

Ken Levy is the Holt B. Harrison Professor of Law at Louisiana State University’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center. Follow him on Twitter @tardigrade18.

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This week, President Trump will announce his nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised to schedule the nominee’s confirmation hearings for this fall, before the midterm elections.

If and when McConnell carries through on this promise, Senate Democrats should immediately file a federal lawsuit against him for violating the so-called “McConnell Rule.” (According to this rule, as McConnell himself stated on Feb. 13, 2016, “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice.”) The issue — whether the McConnell Rule is now binding precedent — would not be political (and therefore “nonjusticiable”) but rather fundamentally legal (and therefore “justiciable”).

The minority party needs to have some remedy, some legal recourse, when the majority leader is completely immune to considerations of fairness and consistency in his exercise of the Senate’s substantial constitutional powers. Imagine, for example, that McConnell suddenly stipulated that only 40 instead of 51 votes were necessary to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. Clearly, the validity of this rule change would be a constitutional question, rather than a political question, because it implicates a fundamental democratic principle: majority rule.

Continue reading “The McConnell Rule is Law”

by By Gary Baley | Cedar St. Times; Original article here.

In a 7-hour marathon Planning Commission meeting Thursday evening, commissioners overruled staff and voted 7-0 to deny telecom giant Verizon’s application for a small cell tower in the Monte Vista neighborhood of Monterey. The meeting, held in City Council chambers, lasted from 6 pm Thursday to 1 am Friday morning.

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One can view the presentations, comments and decisions at the Monterey Planning Commission Meeting video here:

00:03:38 for General Public Comment  |  00:35:45 for Lee Afflerbach  |  
02:53:00 for Public Comment on Agendized Item  |  04:49:15 for the Vote/Applause

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Continue reading “Small Cell Towers Nixed at Monterey Planning Commission”

By Paul Schrodt | July 5, 2018 1:43 p.m. ET | Original article here.

Once thought doomed, landline phones are answering the call of people who are sick of mobiles’ spotty service—and the constant pinging distractions of texts and alerts.

THE PIERCING RING of a home phone used to command respect. “That’s how I was raised: When the phone rings, you hop to it,” I heard my mom say recently as we chatted on my new landline phone. She finally got rid of her hard-wired phone because she couldn’t stop herself from answering it, even after it had primarily become a conduit for robotic telemarketing and fraud.

Despite its demotion to a means of harassment, though, the landline refuses to die. According to a 2017 U.S. government survey, about 44% of households still own traditional phones, down from 53% three years before—but still much higher than, say, the share of those buying vinyl records, another cultish throwback.

Continue reading “Why the Landline Phone Will Never Go Away”

by Adam Lidgett, Law360, July 3, 2018; additional reporting by Bryan Koenig, Kelcee Griffis and Andrew Westney. Editing by Adam LoBelia. | Original article here.

The Federal Communications Commission asked the D.C. Circuit to put on hold combined challenges from Native American tribes and environmentalists to an agency rule exempting from environmental and historic reviews small-cell fixtures necessary for building up next-generation or 5G networks.

The FCC on Monday asked the court to hold in abeyance the consolidated cases challenging a decision to exclude various small wireless fixtures from reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act and National Historic Preservation Act. The agency said it received petitions from various entities asking it to administratively rethink the decision at issue, and that an action on reconsideration might be able to “narrow or further crystallize the scope of the issues that the court will need to review.”

“With the exception of one petition, all of these pending petitions for reconsideration raise at least one of the two principal questions presented by the petitions for review by this court, namely, whether the commission erred in concluding that small wireless facility deployments are exempt from NHPA and NEPA review, and whether the commission adequately consulted with Indian tribes,” the FCC said. “(Some of the petitions also ask the commission to address other issues, such as whether harms associated with radio frequency radiation provide a basis for the agency to reconsider its decision.)”

Continue reading “FCC Asks DC Circuit To Pause Small Cell Rule Challenges”

by Martin L. Pall, PhD, Environmental Research Volume 164, July 2018, Pages 405-416 | Original paper here.

Repeated Wi-Fi studies show that Wi-Fi causes the following seven effects

• Oxidative stress,
• Sperm/testicular damage,
• Neuropsychiatric effects, including EEG changes,
• Apoptosis (premature cell death),
• Cellular DNA damage,
• Endocrine changes, and
• Calcium overload

There are seven repeatedly found Wi-Fi effects which have also been shown to be caused by other similar Radio-frequency Electromagnetic Microwave Radiation (RF-EMR) exposures. Each of the seven should be considered, therefore, as established effects of Wi-Fi RF-EMR exposures. Each of these effects are also caused by exposures to other RF-EMR, with each such effect being documented in 10 to 16 reviews. Therefore, each of these seven RF-EMR effects are established effects of Wi-Fi and of other sources of RF-EMR.

Five properties of Non-thermal RF-EMR effects (occurring at RF-EMR levels many thousands of times lower than FCC RF-EMR exposure guidelines) are discussed:

1. Pulsed, data-modulated, Radio-frequency Electromagnetic Microwave Radiation is, in most cases, more active than are non-pulsed RF-EMR;
2. Artificial, manmade RF-EMR is polarized and such polarized RF-EMR is much more active than non-polarized RF-EMR;
3. Dose response curves are non-linear and non-monotone;
4. RF-EMR effects are often cumulative; and
5. RF-EMR exposures may impact young people more than adults.

These general findings and data presented earlier on Wi-Fi effects were used to assess the Foster and Moulder (F&M) review of Wi-Fi. The F&M study claimed that there were seven important studies of Wi-Fi that each showed no effect. However, none of these were Wi-Fi studies, with each differing from genuine Wi-Fi in distinct ways.

• F&M could, at most, conclude that there was no statistically significant evidence of an effect. The tiny numbers studied in each of these seven F&M-linked studies show that each of them lack statistical power to make any substantive conclusions.

• It follows from these various findings that the placement of Wi-Fi into schools around the country may well be a high level threat to the health of our children as well being a threat to teachers and any very sensitive fetuses teachers may be carrying, as well.

• In conclusion, there are seven repeatedly found Wi-Fi effects which have also been shown to be caused by other similar RF-EMR exposures. Each of the seven should be considered, therefore, as established effects of Wi-Fi.

by Dan Jones, Mobile Editor 6/28/2018 | Original article here.

T-Mobile’s CEO and Sprint’s executive chairman banged the drum for their 5G plans in a lengthy hearing before a Senate Committee Wednesday: Game of Phones: Examining the Competitive Impact of the T-Mobile – Sprint Transaction

"We’ll make sure that America wins the global 5G race," T-Mobile US Inc. CEO John Legere told the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. The $26.5 billion merger is expected to close in the first half of 2019, if approved by regulators. (Link to "T-Mobile to Buy Sprint for $26.5B to Create US 5G Powerhouse".)

Legere and Sprint Corp. executive chairman Marcelo Claure talked frequently about the 5G issue and especially the spectrum needed to deploy it. (Link to "Can the ‘New’ T-Mobile Make America’s Networks Great Again?")

In particular, the pair referred to the 600MHz and 2.5GHz bands that the operators will begin to use for 5G in 2019, if the merger is approved. "It’s a starting point," Claure, although said they would look to add more millimeter wave high-band spectrum as it gets auctioned.

Continue reading “T-Mobile and Sprint at Senate Hearing”

Stewart: What President Lincoln said in his Cooper Union speech was to point out the one thing southern slaveholders really wanted for the Union states.

"This and only this. cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right."

It was on this point that Lincoln said that the Union could not bend.

What Donald Trump wants is for us to stop calling his cruelty, fear and divisiveness wrong, but to join him in calling it right.

This we cannot do . . . and by not yielding, we will prevail.