Taming the 5G Conspiracy

There seems to be a growing concern about the safety of the new mobile technology standard called 5G and it would be perfectly fair to ask whether the general public should be concerned about mobile operators rolling out this new faster technology.

Specifically, social media channels are flooded with warnings of doom and gloom against 5G. Certainly, one could ask why, for example, Facebook and Instagram groups calling for the banning of 5G, seem to pop up everywhere, had there been no substance to the concerns. However, one needs to reflect on the fact that an online “following” does not always justify the legitimacy of cause…look at the resurgence of “Flat Earthers” recently... The essence of the fearmongering around 5G is mainly due to lack of knowledge, with a healthy dose of “conspiracy theory” thrown in. Consider this example - we know a knife could be dangerous since it could certainly be used as a weapon. However, it is also used as a cutlery item when having lunch. To then draw the conclusion that lunchtimes should be avoided sounds a little foolish, but that is how most “5G tales of fear” have their origin.

The fear around 5G seems to be diverged between firstly concerns around the extreme way in which technology is infringing on our privacy – (the massive internet of things) and secondly the concerns that the actual frequencies and transmissions may not have been tested sufficiently.

The way in which technology and connectivity have encroached upon not only our lives but more so our privacy cannot be denied. We have grown used to a life where the very items you search for on Google, get offered to you as banner ads or even directed spam emails or phone calls only a couple of days later. A world where literally every system or entity is collecting your information, is certainly a daunting but imminent thought for many of us. We have seen movies like “The Net” and “Enemy of the State”. To further fuel the fire, we have recently read about large security breaches – once-reputable companies that one would expect to take security seriously like Google, Yahoo, eBay and closer to home, ViewFines, Garmin and Ster Kinekor, have erred greatly and exposed our private information such as credit card and ID number details indiscriminately. The aspiring 5G industry however has themselves contributed to the uneasiness around the technology by positioning 5G as the great enabler for massive machine type communications (mMTC), the internet of things (IoT) and also the 4th Industrial Revolution. A toxic combination of a Big Brother watching and monitoring your everything, while at the same time leveraging Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Automation to render your skills and profession obsolete, is not such an unrealistic leap for many people.

To breathe some sanity into this grim future, we should take time to remind ourselves that the connecting of non-human devices such as electricity meters, security cameras, vehicle tracking devices etc has happened in the 4G (an some even 3G) era already. The only advantage 5G will have over previous generations in this regard is the scalability - meaning the amount of devices per sqkm which may be connected.

Unfortunately, a dystopian society where you will not be able to go anywhere, buy anything or hide anything is always proposed as the likely outcome of a world where everything and everybody is connected.

Ultimately this is not only a technology discussion – it encompasses far wider stakeholders like governments, regulators etc. To think that objecting to 5G will protect us from this very dystopian society is firstly misguided and secondly insufficient. It will be far more effective to campaign for the ethical implementation of concepts such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and for establishment of robust legislation and regulation to ensure data privacy and sovereignty. As parents, to be more informed about the online behaviour of our children...and as individuals to be more careful deciding to whom we give our email addresses, telephone numbers etc. The old cliché still rings relevant – If a service is for free, you are the product.

The other aspect around the fearmongering prevalent with 5G, is concerns around the actual radio transmissions and more specifically the “dangerous frequencies that are to be used for 5G”.

Here it is necessary to set the record straight: Of the 44 frequencies currently recognized by the 3GPP as 5G compatible bands (as of Dec 2019 - more about the 3GPP as industry body later), 39 bands have previously, for MANY years, been used for either 2G, 3G and 4G, or combinations thereof. There are now huge concerns around the fact that 5G is reported to also use “microwave” frequencies. Most people use microwave ovens in their homes to cook and heat food, so the inference that this same radiation is now going to be ubiquitously spread in pursuance of faster internet might very well (justifiably) seem to be a very risky undertaking indeed.

Science and linguistics are often at odds and it seems that this is certainly the case in this regard. If one looks at the scientific term “microwave”, it refers to a whole range of frequencies, where the wavelength varies between 1 meter down to 1 millimeter, albeit with no direct inference to “waves used to cook your food”. The frequency range referred to as microwave certainly is a very big range - it spans from 300MHz (300 million Hertz or “cycles per second”) to 300,000MHz or 300GHz (300 billion Hertz). But to give some context to this, be aware that the television transmissions you have been watching since the late 70’s, were already transmitted over microwave frequencies (470MHz to well above 800MHz). Even the very first Cellphone networks introduced in South Africa in 1994 were already microwave (900MHz), and so was 3G (2100MHz). Bluetooth connectivity between your phone and your car kit operates on 2400MHz or 2.4GHz – also microwave. Your Wi-Fi in the office and back home operates between 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz – once again microwave.

What we refer to as actual “microwaves”, utilized in a microwave oven, is in fact a very specific, precise frequency of 2450MHz, chosen as this value, because it is known to generate a heating effect called “dielectric heating” of the water molecules of food. Even though this seems numerically close to Wi-Fi frequencies, one needs to understand that the power delivered by a microwave oven is often as high as 1000W while an average Wi-Fi router will transmit at no more than 100mW (milliwatt). So, there is a 10,000x difference in the power. Furthermore, the power of the microwave is reflected to stay inside of the small enclosure of the oven, while in the Wi-Fi access point, the transmission power is distributed (and in fact “diluted”) over several hundreds of square meters.

So, what are the real drivers then for yet a newer “G”? Well for a start, the amount of internet users is increasing every year. We are still quite far from 100% data user penetration in most developing markets, so it will continue growing for the foreseeable future. Apart from all the “human” users, the amount of “non-human” users is growing too…

Credit card machines, smart water and electricity meters, car navigation, delivery vehicles, security cameras, all communicate with increasing data volume and complexity.

Deep inside a cellular device, a process called “modulation” takes place – this is where data is encoded on an actual radio wave. This used to be quite primitive in the past – requiring substantial amounts of frequencies on which to encode even a little of information. However, in the same way that computers are becoming faster and faster (at a tempo often referred to as Moore’s law) resulting in improved computing power, it enables us to encode larger amounts of data on the same amount of frequencies. In order to ensure that we harness these improvements, incremental technology developments are formalized as “Technology Generations” or “G’s, and globally standardized in order to ensure that for instance a 4G device bought in a given country can operate on a 4G network in any other country. 5G is nothing more than such a newer generation. Since the advent of 4G, we have become capable of encoding vastly more information on the same amount of frequencies, but still, it is not keeping pace with our demand for faster internet, and specifically the amount of users requiring this. So around 2015, the 3GPP (3G Partnership Project – a global initiative which was founded around 1998, specifically to unify efforts for 3G back then) put a “stake in the ground” on what was to become the first version of 5G.

5G therefore, is nothing more than the combination of newer frequency bands and more clever encoding of more information on these newer frequencies.  Yes, there is a lot of hype around “5G Use cases” which essentially just talk about 5G’s ability to be intelligent about the type of traffic which is carried and suitably prioritise transport of data through the network.

A common misinterpreted anti-5G-statement is that, because of the use of higher frequencies that may be used for 5G, it will require base stations every 100 to 150m and that this will detrimentally affect the population in general. There are two aspects to consider here. Firstly, the process of providing cell-service through micro base stations inside of malls, apartment buildings and offices, has been continuing for more than 20 years and many people do not realize that they have been living, working and shopping within 20 to 30m of these antennas for years with no ill effects observed. Secondly, the practise of putting transmitters closer to the subscriber is in fact specifically to transmit at the lowest possible transmission power - for exactly the same reason one would sometime need to put a 2nd Wi-Fi router at the far end of your house to provide coverage in that area. The notion that the general public will be living in a soup of higher than ever EMF smog due to 5G transmitters being everywhere, is simply unfounded. In fact, moving transmitters further away from intended subscribers, results in substantially higher transmission power at the base station to begin with.

It must be remembered that the debate on health concerns related to EMF exposure escalated during every previous transition of cellular technology generation. What is different this time around is that the introduction of 5G finds itself amidst a perfect storm of many other contributing myths and rumours. The new allegation is that the industry is deliberately “hiding the truth from the public”, much like like the tobacco industry did regarding lung cancer in the 60’s. There is one big fundamental error in this theory – with the amount of access to information in the 21st century it is extremely unlikely that a “truth“ like this will be hidden for so long. Look at recent examples: Dieselgate in Volkswagen – a orchestrated campaign to fool emission tests – someone blew the whistle within a couple of years. Boeing and the MCAS system on the 737 MAX – the truth came out…unfortunately after loss of life. And these were single corporate entities…  The idea that an entire collective industry could be conspiring to hide "the truth" is ludicrous – we are talking about equipment manufacturers, handsets manufacturers, the International Telecommunication Union, every single corresponding continental, regional and country body, communication ministries and regulators. It is just plainly impossible.

Also the World Health Organisation will have to be “in on this”… only, they have through tens of thousands of studies during the past decades, agreed that no health risks could be established from exposure to radio signal at the levels and frequencies used for mobile communications. International Exposure Guidelines are developed by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), a body based in Germany, a non-governmental independent organization whose finances and governance is openly stated on their webpages and annual reports. There has been about 350 specific studies on millimetre wave technologies, so claims that the same diligence for 5G compared to previous ”G’s” are not progressing similarly, are simply not true. At the most recent GSMA EMF Forum in Brussels it was once again emphasised that the international guidelines and research, spanning more than 20 years, apply to 5G and sufficiently protect all persons (younger children included) and that available results show 5G signal levels to be at similar levels compared to existing mobile technologies.

What then about all the doomsay on Facebook and YouTube, and supposedly “credible specialists” warning against 5G? From personal experience I can say that I have learnt that a sound scientific argument and the bearer thereof is always willing to defend himself and his arguments. Sadly, during all the 5G technology and spectrum conference which I have attended the past 3 years, many of which I was a speaker at, none of these “specialists” ever appeared to defend their statements. Neither have any of them participated in recent industry studies for further refinement of permissible exposure limits for wearable devices, IoT and mMTC. It seems these “specialists” are very quick to claim they are being ignored and silenced but by their own conduct they prefer to restrict their exposure to conspiracy videos on YouTube and speak only to susceptible laymen at community gatherings.

Why then would supposedly credible people be so vocal about concerns which are neither relevant nor accurate?  By the same token: Why do we still have “scientists” designing “free energy” and “cold fusion” machines in 2019/2020? Why do we have flat earthers and anti-vaxxers in an age where most of the earth’s population has free access to abundant reliable information proving the contrary? For the simple reason: If you cannot make it as a scientist, you can always make it as a “pseudo-scientist”. Or as the adage goes, if you are not part of the solution, you can make good money from prolonging the problem…

Perhaps we should remind ourselves of the quote once again made relevant by Stephen Hawking: “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

A great digital future is around the corner – the vehicle to this future lies in 5G and further technology evolutions. Let us not miss out on this great opportunity because of unfounded conspiracies.

Declaration: I have been working in the communication industry for close to 3 decades and these observations and opinions are my own and in no way associated or informed by any corporate institution or employer.