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Adapted from an article by Bruce Kushnick, Mar 25, 2019 | Original Medium article here.

Kushnick’s Law:

“A regulated company will always renege on promises to provide public benefits tomorrow in exchange for regulatory and financial benefits today.”

Why do we have the "Race to 5G"? Because 5 comes after 4 . . . this is more a label for perceived progress than actual, tangible consumer benefit. Market watchers and consumers know that the "Smart Phone" has run its course. It has reached market saturation and consumers are settling into a more sane upgrade pattern — keeping their phones for three year or longer. Smart Phones, since about 2015 or so have, on the whole, have been more capable than consumers need or want. That explains why Smart Phone unit sales in the US have flattened or dropped for multiple years.

The same can be said for the Wireless networks. We have reached market saturation. Where there is 4G Wireless service, people are satisfied with their service. Where there is no 4G service (the rural and lower income areas) people are not. Will 5G address the need to for upgraded service in these underserved and unserved areas? Not likely because the business case for private wireless companies is not lucrative enough. It is more lucrative for them to force another unnecessary upgrade on the densely populated urban and suburban areas in an effort to convince people to upgrade, once again.

5G wireless, therefore is just another bait-and-switch campaign to secure more regulatory and financial benefits for AT&T and Verizon so they can maximize their future profits. 5G is merely a label for "what comes next" — lots of hype and promises for the future that history shows will mostly not materialize.

The game plan: AT&T and Verizon can just promise a new shiny bauble (the Internet of Things) make more money and get rid of all regulations. That is what this is all about.

• Any real consumer benefit? Mostly from "meh" to downright indifference.
• Any fix for the growing Digital Divide? Sorry. Not profitable enough.

Continue reading “The 5G Bait-and-Switch Continues”

Support 2019 State Bills in 80th Oregon State Legislative Assembly

Three bills relating to wireless networks and devices will have hearings March 27th and 28th in the Oregon State legislature. We only have a short window to collect testimony to inform committee chairs and other lawmakers. The committee must receive letters by March 25th. Can you help us by submitting a letter of support to the legislature?

• Oregon Senate Bill 281 — SB.281 — Requires manufacturer of digital products to label product with information relating to health risks associated with use of product. Authorizes Oregon Health Authority to adopt rules related to labeling of digital products.

• Oregon Senate Bill 282 — SB.282 — Directs Department of Education and Oregon Health Authority to study and take action to limit student use of computers, mobile digital devices and other electronic media in classrooms in accordance with health and safety guidelines

• Oregon Senate Bill 283 — SB.283 — Directs Department of Education and Oregon Health Authority to study and take action to eliminate students’ exposures to harmful microwave radiation

Continue reading “Request from Parents Across America for Safe Technology”

Simi Valley Wireless Urgency Ordinance Seeks to Pave Way for Densified 4G and 5G Close Proximity Microwave Radiation Antennas (CPMRAs) in Residential Areas

FCC Rules 18-133 that are being contested by many law suits in the Federal Court of Appeals (Ninth Circuit) leave little room for public oversight, which is why well-informed cities are seeking a Motion to Stay these regulations until the Law Suits are complete.

Adapted from article by Melissa Simon March 22, 2019 | Original Simi Valley Acorn article here.

Attend the Important Simi Valley City Council meeting on Mon Mar 25 at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall, 2929 Tapo Canyon Road

The FCC is attempting to limit local control over Wireless Telecommunications Facility (WTF) installations to support the rollout of densified 4G and 5G infrastructure in Simi Valley, but these FCC regulations will have to survive the multiple law suits that have already been filed by many US cities, counties and Consumer Protection groups — before these regulations will stand as final. The cities, listed below, are fighting for their rights to manage the public-rights-of-way and protect the safety, privacy and property values of their residents. Is you city doing that? If not, ask them why not?

If a proposal to update an outdated city ordinance for Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (WTFs) is approved by the Simi Valley City Council on Monday, applications from companies like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to install densified 4G and 5G infrastructure could be handled without public notice, hearings or appeals in Simi Valley — based on virtually the same cookie-cutter recommendations handed to Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley by wireless consultant and attorney Jonathon Kramer, a founding partner of Telecom Law firm. Kramer has close ties to the Wireless industry and is earning significant revenue from promoting the expansion of densified 4G and 5G infrastructure in Cincinnati, OH and other cities across the US.

From Government Technology:

"Broadband engineer Dr. Jonathan Kramer, an attorney at Los Angeles-based Telecom Law Firm, P.C. which is advising Cincinnati: ‘Using the rail analogy, we want to bring the high-speed [pulsed, data-modulated, Radio-frequency Electromagnetic Microwave Radiation] trains into Cincinnati. This is a great place to try out interesting ideas"

Continue reading “Simi Valley Wireless Urgency Ordinance”

By Jeremy Horwitz@horwitz, Mar 22, 2019 | Original VentureBeat Article here.

Verizon launched its 5G Home broadband service in October 2018, and is readying its mobile 5G network now.

Verizon may have been the world’s first major carrier to launch a commercial 5G network, but a new report suggests that its 5G Home service isn’t practically scalable —

• its short-range 5G “small cells” are expensive to install,
• reach too few customers, and
• might not be economically feasible for a nationwide rollout.

That’s the harsh conclusion of research analysts at MoffettNathanson (via MultiChannel), whose “Peek Behind the Curtain of Verizon’s 5G Rollout” report and followup conference call today questioned whether the carrier will be able to scale and make money on its fixed 5G network. The researchers focused on findings in Sacramento, one of the first 5G cities, roughly six months after Verizon launched 5G Home there.

According to the report, only 6 percent of homes in tested areas had access to Verizon’s 5G, and under 3 percent of residences in those areas actually subscribed to the 5G service. Moreover, the report said that the millimeter wave-based “cell radii appear much smaller” than expected, which is to say that even more 5G “small cell” broadcasting units might be needed on towers than was previously thought.

Continue reading “Verizon 5G Home Service Is Too Expensive to Scale”

by Karl Bode, Mar 20 2019 | Original Motherboard article here.

You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand, and America has no idea just how bad its broadband coverage gaps are.

Generally speaking, you can’t fix a problem you don’t fully understand. That’s particularly true of US broadband, where the government’s efforts to map the scope of the nation’s broadband coverage gaps have long been ridiculed as an inaccurate mess.

Microsoft this week was the latest to highlight the US government’s terrible broadband mapping in a filing with the FCC, first spotted by journalist Wendy Davis. In it, Microsoft accuses the FCC of over-stating actual broadband availability and urges the agency to do better.

Microsoft said in the filing:

“The Commission’s broadband availability data, which underpins FCC Form 477 and the Commission’s annual Section 706 report, appears to overstate the extent to which broadband is actually available throughout the nation. For example, in some areas the Commission’s broadband availability data suggests that ISPs have reported significant broadband availability (25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up) while Microsoft’s usage data indicates that only a small percentage of consumers actually access the Internet at broadband speeds in those areas.

Continue reading “Microsoft Says the FCC Overstates Broadband Availability in the US”

A Tesla in every driveway just won’t cut it.

By Alex Baca Feb 11, 2019 | Original Mother Jones article here.

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There might be no better monument to the limits of American environmentalism in the climate change era than a parking garage in Berkeley, California.

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It’s got “rooftop solar, electric-vehicle charging stations and dedicated spots for car-share vehicles, rainwater capture and water reatment features” — not to mention 720 parking spots. It cost nearly $40 million to build. At night, it positively glows. And it’s a block from the downtown Berkeley BART station.

That America’s most famous progressive city, one where nearly everything is within walking distance, spent $40 million to renovate a parking garage one block from a subway station suggests that progressive Democrats remain unwilling to seriously confront the crisis of climate change. America’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions is transportation.

In California, the proportion of CO2 from transportation is even higher: above 40 percent. Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín anticipates that the Center Street Parking Garage will out-green all others in the state with a LEED Silver rating, making it a perfect example of our approach to climate change: glibly “greening” the lives we live now rather than contemplating the future generations who will have to live here too.

On Thursday, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey unveiled just such a fix: the Green New Deal, a proposal that bills itself as a plan for the environment and the economy in equal measure. It is designed to

1. steer America toward a low-carbon economy,
2. fulfill the right to clean air and clean water,
3. restore the American landscape,
4. strengthen urban sustainability and resilience, and
5. put a generation to work.

Continue reading “The Green New Deal’s Biggest Problem”

Comment: Promoting 5G is Reckless and Scientifically Indefensible

By Cindy Sage, Editor, BioInitiative Reports
In response to Kevin Werbach’s 3/6/19 opinion piece in the NY Times.

It’s not just about competition. This one-sided opinion by an economist does nothing to
lay out what else the public should know about big problems coming with 5G.

It is also about associated health impacts from 5G and installing the infrastructure via small cells that are, in fact, large emitters of far more radiofrequency radiation than we have now. Health hazards from chronic exposure to cell phone radiation are already scientifically established beyond a reasonable doubt.

Children born in the last 20 years with heavy exposures to wireless at home and at school now have cancer risks that are epidemiologically visible (testicular cancer in boys age 15-19, malignant brain tumors in adolescents at five times the rate of adults). The epidemic rate of profound mental and behavioral impairments in newborns who will not have normal cognitive function in their lifetimes is in part due to maternal use of cell phones during pregnancy, even as Telecom companies lobby to stop maintaining safe landlines and shift us all to unhealthy and addictive wireless phones.

Nationally, the 4G and 5G densification scheme requires the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of new mini-cell towers mounted on utility poles in front of homes down every block in America. Informed resistance over health harm should doom this scheme which is clearly a federal usurping of public rights-of-way.

5G institutionalizes profit for Telecom and Wireless industries at the expense of public health and safety. No amount of industry self-promotion and complicity of the FCC as a captured agency of that industry can cover up how dangerous and unnecessary this 5G rollout will be. Every movement of its citizens will be trackable, and thus made vulnerable to commercial manipulation, surveillance and disruption.

Continue reading “Promoting 5G is Reckless and Scientifically Indefensible”

$284,144,450 in Round One Gross Bids of 24 GHz spectrum

Inside Towers, March 15, 2019 | Original article here.

The first round of the nation’s second-ever millimeter wave spectrum auction ended yesterday afternoon. The auction resumes today at 10 a.m. EDT.

The total amount of provisionally accepted bids on spectrum licenses at the end of round one was $284,144,450. That compares to $36,428,510 in provisional bids for round one in the previous auction of 28 GHz spectrum.

Licenses in New York City generated the highest bids at $5,047,000 each, followed Los Angeles, which generated bids at $3,882,000 each. Licenses in Chicago generated bids at $1,873,000 each.

Auction 102 offers 2,909 licenses in the 24 GHz band. The lower segment of the 24 GHz band (24.25–24.45 GHz) will be licensed as two, 100-megahertz blocks, and the upper segment (24.75–25.25 GHz) will be licensed as five, 100-megahertz blocks.

Thousand Oaks Maintains that FCC Rules Leave Little Room for Public Oversight

Adapted from an article by By Becca Whitnall, becca@theacorn.com, Mar 14, 2019 | Original article here.

THEY’RE COMING — The FCC is attempting to preempt local control over wireless equipment installations to support the rollout of new 5G technology, but these very regulations are being challenged by many Cities in the Ninth Circuit Federal Appeals Court because they are a massive Federal overreach into intrastate matters.

Applications from companies like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to install so-called fifth generation, or 5G, wireless communication equipment in Thousand Oaks are expected, if this consolidated law suit from many US Cities is not granted its Motion for Stay of FCC Order 18-133.

City Attorney Noonan misrepresents basis of 9th Circuit Case

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Mar 5, 2019: Thousand Oaks Wireless Telecommunications Facilities Urgency Ordinance

Also, if any of these applications for these Close Proximity Microwave Radiation Antennas (CPMRAs) are to be handled without public notice, hearings or appeals, then the City of Thousand Oaks is opening itself up to huge liabilities.

A misguided Urgency Ordinance, approved by the City Council at its March 5 meeting, is “not the only way” to meet new FCC rules — rules that are still being challenged in court and which may be dismissed in the future.

The 60-day or 90-day shotclocks are just one of several big changes, voted through by the FCC Republican majority last year, intended to speed the rollout of densified 4G and 5G infrastructure.

Continue reading “Thousand Oaks Prepares for Wave of Wireless”

By Kelly Hill on March 13, 2019 | Original article here.

The FirstNet network build-out is helping AT&T to increase its network capacity by about 50% as it adds additional band support while turning up FirstNet’s Band 14 spectrum, according to John Stephens, AT&T’s CFO. Stephens spoke at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet and Telecom Conference yesterday.

As AT&T builds out the FirstNet network, he said, it is also adding support for its AWS and Wireless Communications Spectrum holdings, as well as enabling LTE features such as:

• 4×4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO);
• Four component-carrier aggregation; and
• 256 QAM modulation

With those spectrum aggregation capabilities, Stephens said that the difference is akin to having four single-lane highways compared to one four-lane highway:

Continue reading “FirstNet is AT&T’s Springboard to 5G”