The more I hear about 5G, the more I think it's an industry trying to sell a product that nobody is asking for. I have no complaints about the speed I get on my iPhone from T-Mobile here in the US. I wish I had better LTE coverage, but I'm happy with the performance. Most of the time it's snappier than my Wi-Fi (which is weird). I get a solid 8 to 20 mbits under fair conditions- I can stream movies and music just fine.<p>All I hear about 5G is that it requires a large amount of antennas on both your phone (4 because a hand covering the antenna can cause a drop in signal) and around you. I don't want to be near a high power transmitter that's low frequency, and I really don't want to be near a high frequency one.<p>What's the sell of 5G? I guess the speed, but what? 1 Gbit to my phone? Why. Considering that I only get 15GB of "Unlimited" data now, it isn't going to replace Wi-F. Because of the density required of the towers, it's not going to replace 4G/LTE as some areas it's just unrealistic to have the required density.
When I was in college, I remember taking a class in silicon design. At one point, a student remarked, "man, silicon is like... black magic."<p>"No," the teacher sharply rebuked. "It's governed by well understood and reliable mathematical equations. Though difficult, it is far from magic."<p>There was a brief pause, the teacher was normally easy going and congenial. His harsh words caught us off guard.<p>"...antennas on the other hand, that is black magic."
Are these proper manhole covers? I mean the big heavy metal type that can support vehicle traffic? The one in the picture seems the type for covering access to a "manhole" but not one under a street. I do have to wonder whether the local cell will drop out every time a huge metal object, a bus, rolls over the cover.<p>>>It eliminates traffic disruptions from street construction, and there are no antennas awkwardly placed on buildings, marring the appearance of a neighborhood.<p>Said by someone who has never attempted to install anything inside a manhole. They will need to close the streets. You cannot just creep through the sewers installing stuff without disrupting the traffic above. Workers are not moles. They will need to run new lines. And in modern cities, the type without the huge walk-in storm sewers of NY/London/Paris/SF, there will still be digging.<p>With many innovations these days it is hard to determine feasibility from initial articles/claims. Lots of inventions seem to exist only to get grant money, with no hope of practicality (solar roads, solar windows). If these are lightweight manhole covers that cannot support traffic (ie just an antenna mounted atop an aluminum cover) then I'll chalk it up alongside those sidewalk tiles that generate electricity from pedestrians: might work, but will never be practical.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Roadways" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Roadways</a>
<a href="https://www.6sqft.com/pavegen-opens-worlds-first-smart-street-which-generates-electricity-from-footsteps/" rel="nofollow">https://www.6sqft.com/pavegen-opens-worlds-first-smart-stree...</a>
I'm curious how this affects the NIMBY fights about antennas. Some of those fights are about aesthetics of the antennas, but some of the concern is around the radiation, which is not a finished debate. Mobile phone signals have been designated as possibly a cause of cancer by the WHO if I recall correctly. It hasn't been possible to rule out that mobile phones do not cause harm, which is something I was surprised to learn. I thought it was a settled debate that mobile phones were safe.<p><a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet" rel="nofollow">https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...</a>
A side issue with 5G is that there are all sorts of fun / unusual effects being discovered with GSM/wifi suffusing our environments - i remember Stanford being able to detect people moving behind a wall using the wifi signals. Simply Monitoring signal strength has had many commercial opportunities and now we are going to put millimetre wave radar throughout our cities - expect novel uses to crop up
Wouldn't traffic poles serve as better publicly-owned antenna mount points? They are powered and have better line of sight to everything (broader range). I wonder why manholes are considered better.
I'm far from an expert, but aren't manholes (and streetlights and traffic lights, by extension) effectively grounded, hence incurring into insane loss?