Court Vacates FCC Dereg of Cell Tower-Site Reviews

Vacates and remands that portion of larger deregulatory order back to commission

John Eggerton

Turns out the race to 5G can't run roughshod over the landscape, at least as the FCC has proposed it.

In a partial defeat for the FCC and a victory for localities trying to retain their authority over cell tower placement and impact, a federal appeals court has ruled that the FCC did not justify its deregulation of small cell site historic and environmental reviews and has vacated that part of a larger wireless deployment deregulation order.

Over the objections of local government officials and the reservations of Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC voted last September to streamline the path to small cell deployment, including the part on site reviews, billing it as crucial to the rollout of 5G wireless service, an FCC and Trump Administration priority.

The FCC argued that such reviews were not statutorily required, would impede the rollout of 5G networks, and that their costs outweighed any benefit. But as with many FCC decisions, opponents went to court.

That court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit*, said it did not buy the FCC's argument that such reviews "pose little to no cognizable religious, cultural, or environmental risk," in particular given "the vast number of proposed deployments and the reality that the Order will principally affect small cells that require new construction," the court said.

The court found that the FCC did not adequately address the potential harms of deregulation or the benefits of environmental and historic-preservation reviews, particularly for Indian lands that "may include Tribal burial grounds, land vistas, and other sites that Tribal Nations...regard as sacred or otherwise culturally significant."

For that reason, the court said, the FCC's regulatory order on small cells is arbitrary and capricious. (It did not vacate the changes the FCC made to tribe's participation in the reviews).

The court vacated that part of the order and remanded it back to the FCC, which could try to better justify it.

The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma and supporting intervenors had challenged the order.

"This confirms that the FCC cannot just scream "5G" to justify ignoring its duties to Tribal Nations and to the environment," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, Georgetown University Law Center, a lawyer who represented the challengers. "The decision does give the FCC more latitude than we would prefer on some of the mechanisms for tribal review, but we will deal with that on the remand."

A spokesperson for FCC chair Ajit Pai had not response, referring the call to commissioner Brendan Carr, who championed the tower citing deregulatory item.

Carr suggested the legal glass was still mostly full.

“This FCC has been focused on cutting red tape so that all Americans, regardless of where they live, can have access to fast, affordable connections, including through our world-leading 5G," he said. "Combined, the FCC’s actions have enabled the U.S. to leapfrog our global competitors and secure the largest 5G build in the world.

“I am pleased that the court upheld key provisions of last March’s infrastructure decision. Most importantly, the court affirmed our decision that parties cannot demand upfront fees before reviewing any cell sites, large or small. These fees, which had grown exponentially in the last few years, created incentives for frivolous reviews unrelated to any potential impact on historic sites. Those financial incentives are gone, and we expect our fee restrictions to continue greatly diminishing unnecessary and costly delays. I’m also pleased that the court affirmed our accelerated timelines for reviews. Already, these reforms have resulted in significant new builds."

“We are reviewing the portion of last March’s decision that the D.C. Circuit did not affirm and look forward to next steps, as appropriate."

Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel saw it a bit differently.

“The court just vacated a large part of the FCC’s 5G deployment strategy,"" she said. "For those paying attention, that means the agency tasked with the future of connectivity didn’t get it right. It’s time to go back to the drawing board and do better.”

"The FCC has rightfully sought to modernize outdated siting rules to accelerate the deployment of 5G technologies, and it’s been working," said Tom Power, SVP and general counsel for CTIA, which weighed in with the court in support of the FCC. "These reforms are pushing America ahead in the global 5G race and are critical to maintaining our wireless leadership. We are pleased that the court affirmed some of these steps today, particularly with respect to fees and deadlines for siting reviews. The court’s decision also underscores the need for further legislative, judicial and regulatory action to remove barriers to deployment."

*Editor's note: The court decision likely got more immediate and wider attention than it might otherwise as reporters watched the D.C. court side for another FCC decision--net neutrality, which did not come out Friday. 

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IEEE: 5G Base Stations Expected to Use Roughly 3X as Much Power As 4G Base Stations and More Are Needed to Cover Same Area. That Ain’t Eco-Friendly!

By B.N. Frank

Concerned about your carbon footprint and everybody else’s?

Research has proven that exposure to 5G can cause excessive sweating and excessively sweating people are surely going to crank up the A/C which means increased energy usage.  Research has also proven that 5G makes phones and modems overheat and users are being encouraged to crank up their A/C to remedy this which also means increased energy usage.

Now IEEE has announced that a 5G base station is generally expected to consume roughly 3X times as much power as a 4G base station:

A 5G base station is generally expected to consume roughly three times as much power as a 4G base station. And more 5G base stations are needed to cover the same area.

So there’s that too.

As for the bees and other insects, they’re just plain screwed if 5G continues to be installed worldwide.  Of course, in the long run, we all will be no matter how consistently and earnestly we try to reduce our carbon footprints in other ways.

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FCC Proposes No Change of Its RF Standards

What a shock!

NOT

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After six years of study, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided not to revise its current safety limits for RF radiation. The rules, which were first adopted in 1996 and are the only ones governing cell phone exposures in the U.S., will continue to be based only on thermal effects.

“After a thorough review of the record and consultation with [the FDA and other health] agencies, we find it appropriate to maintain the existing radiofrequency limits, which are among the most stringent in the world for cell phones,” said Julius Knapp, the chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology.

Some had wanted the FCC to harmonize its limits with those of ICNIRP, which are considerably more permissive for cell phone exposures. The ICNIRP standard is 2 W/Kg, averaged over 10 g of tissue, while the FCC limit is 1.6 W/Kg over 1 g. The larger averaging volume alone makes the ICNIRP standard less stringent by two- to threefold (see MWN, J/A00, p.8).

In the FCC announcement, issued today, Chairman Ajit Pai cites the support of Jeffrey Shuren, the director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “The available scientific evidence to date does not support adverse health effects in humans due to exposures at or under the current limits…” Shuren told the FCC, adding, “No changes to the current standards are warranted at this time.”

FCC officials said at a press briefing that there’s “nothing special about 5G,” according to a report from CNET. They went on to argue that the scientific evidence to date indicates that, in terms of causing health effects, 5G is no different from any other cellular technology, including 4G or 3G. The higher-frequency signals (millimeter waves) used to deliver 5G also pose no health risk, they said, pointing out that the existing RF exposure guidelines apply to 5G.

The FCC first announced its plan to review the agency’s RF rules in March 2013 in a 200-page filing.

For more on the FCC and RF safety, go here.

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Austrian parliament commissions study on 5G health effects

The Austrian parliament has commissioned a study into the health effects of 5G networks due to concerns among the public the new generation of mobile services could pose risks from increased radiation exposure. 

The Advisory Council on Technology Assessment of the Austrian Parliament has decided to obtain expertise in the field and appointed a consortium of the Institute for Technology Assessment of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Institute of Technology to conduct a study. The research institutes already provide the parliament with scientific advice on many topics. 

The study is expected to be ready by January 2020, providing an overview of the latest research on the topic. The report will be published on the parliament's website.

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Pentagon launching ‘solar spy balloons’ over midwest, documents reveal

The United States military intends to test a number of surveillance balloons over six states. The future deployment of these high-altitude surveillance balloons was revealed in a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) document filing.

The balloons will not be piloted and will run on solar power. South Dakota will serve as the official launch spots for the balloons, with navigational radiuses of 250 miles. If you live in Wisconsin, Iowa, or even Missouri, you could be under experimental surveillance in the near future. The balloons will reach altitudes of over 60,000 feet, far beyond any human eye detectable ranges. The balloons will be used to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotics trafficking and homeland security threats.”

The balloons will be equipped with cutting edge technologies, such as powerful radars that can track cars and trucks. Weather won’t discourage the success of the spy balloons missions, either, as they are equipped to endure most types of weather activities.

Of course, it is difficult to ignore the full potential of such high-altitude spy devices. In an article found in The Guardian, Arthur Holland Michel, the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York, said, “What this new technology proposes is to watch everything at once. Sometimes it’s referred to as ‘combat TiVo’ because when an event happens somewhere in the surveilled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came from.”

The “everything at once” line should feel a bit unsettling, at least if you are concerned with big government spying. Such technology means common Americans have little place to hide from surveillance. It’s one thing to turn off Alexa or your iPhone, it is far another to hide in a bunker for the rest of your life. Of course, nothing in the description of these surveillance balloons implies that the technology will be used to spy on us. But that’s never disclosed in any technology. The spying events are usually “accidents” or the work of “rogue employees.” Both Google and Amazon claimed they never intended to spy on us using high-tech personal assistants such as Alexa, but they did.

The US Southern Command (Southcom) commissioned the release of these spy balloons. Southcom is responsible for defense agendas in Central and South America. Mainly, they aim to cut off large shipments of drugs.

The ACLU is firing back, however, saying that American citizens have a right to privacy.

“We do not think that American cities should be subject to wide-area surveillance in which every vehicle could be tracked wherever they go,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Even in tests, they’re still collecting a lot of data on Americans: who’s driving to the union house, the church, the mosque, the Alzheimer’s clinic,” he said. “We should not go down the road of allowing this to be used in the United States and it’s disturbing to hear that these tests are being carried out, by the military no less.”

Sierra Nevada, the technology company tasked with supplying Southcom with spy technology, previously distributed planes for use in Central and South American operations. But planes are expensive in terms of fuel usage and flight crews. Solar spy balloons save tremendous money and ultimately, would be less detectable making them more effective.

In other words, US government surveillance just got super cheap and easy. The balloons can stay in the air for months at a time. Some believe these balloons may be able to provide improved cell phone and Internet services. Could the 5G health risk activists have yet another concern?

Google earth picture of South Dakota surveillance balloon launch station.

The bitter truth remains, we can’t trust our government with spying technology. Yes, it’s always been among us, but new technology is bolstering its potential to unfathomable heights (pun intended). Our devices consistently track us, now the government can literally follow us as we drive to the store from 60,000 feet away. It will all be accomplished under the guise of more “safety and security.”

As a group, we are trading our civil liberties for perceived improved security. If history tells us anything, we aren’t likely to win that battle.

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More 5G tower victories across Australia

Telecommunications giants have been met with further roadblocks in the race towards 5G in Australia, with more regions successfully campaigning to reject future tower proposals.

The Lathlain and Currumbin Valley regions have recently won bids to appeal both tower and mobile base station installations, following on from similar victories in the Sutherland Shire region.

LATHLAIN, WA

A proposed 5G tower in Lathlain, Western Australia has been denied approval after residents voiced their concerns about radiation exposure and visual impact on the surroundings.

The 15-metre Telstra telecommunications tower at 156 Orrong Rd was planned to initially enhance Telstra’s 4G wireless network and to serve as a platform for future 5G services.

Residents surrounding the proposed location were against the potential radiation exposure from 5G technology near their living space at a Town of Victoria Park council meeting last month.

In the meeting, Lathlain GP Chris Chang compared the dangers of 5G installations with smoking, which was not considered dangerous 40 years ago:

“Even though they say it’s safe now, doesn’t mean it’s safe in the future”.

Cr Ronhhda Potter said she didn’t want the residents to end up with something on their doorstep what she wouldn’t want on hers.

“This area within itself is an area that needs some beautifying and I don’t think it needs the addition of an unsightly structure”.

Mayor Trevor Vaughan said he supported the application and reminded the public gallery the applicant could appeal to the State Administrative Tribunal for refusal.

A 2008 application for a 15-metre pole in the same location was refused by the council in 2009.

CURRUMBIN VALLEY, QLD

Across the country, concerned citizens are also fighting back against Telstra’s installation plans.

Last week, a team of Currumbin and Tallebudgera Valley residents also found positive results in the region, after residents won a long-fought battle over a proposal to install a major telecommunications base station at 466 Tallebudgera Connection Rd.

The tower, originally announced by Telstra to be over 36 metres high with 42 antennae, is surrounded by state and locally significant vegetation.

The tower was set to be fixed 150-200 metres from a number of homes, and it would hang over the ridgeline and in a prime koala habitat. 

Through passionate lobbying, residents presented 1024 petition signatures and 539 written objections, to encourage the City of Gold Coast Council Planning Committee to listen to their story. 

In response, the proposals have since been abandoned, after first successfully refusing the proposed development against the planning department’s recommendation to approval the facility:

Residents celebrate after a long-fought victory.
Photo: No 4G, 4GX or future 5G Tower for Currumbin Valley | Facebook

Residents believed that if the 4GX tower was approved, then Telstra would not need any council approval to upgrade it to 5G capabilities, as we have seen in other locations across the country.

BUILDING MOMENTUM

The new victories continue a wave of anti-5G actions that have swept across the country this year.

Protesters in Northern Rivers NSW this year. Photo: Echo.net.au

We recently reported that Sutherland Shire Council has also recently approved an appeal against Telstramounting ‘small cell’ installations on community infrastructure.

A meeting organised by Lilli Pilli residents on Sunday was attended by about 120 people, including a number from other parts of Sydney, where there is also widespread community concern.

Barrister Ray Broomhall and Lyn Mclean, the head of EMR Australia, spoke about residents’ legal rights and health effects from this infrastructure.

Furthermore, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) recently issued Telstra a formal warningfor failing to adhere to rules on deploying mobile phone base stations.

Australians have been fighting back against 5G technology with community action groups that connect like-minded individuals, inform the local area and take action with surrounding councils.

Recently in Melbourne, protesters walked from Flagstaff Gardens to Bourke Street Mall, stopping outside Telstra’s head office in Exhibition Street.

This follows on similar protests in Gosford (Central Coast), Northern Beaches, Perth CBD, Lismore and other locations.

Are we seeing Telstra’s dam walls starting to crack in the race to rollout 5G technology by 2020?

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Letter from Beatrice Golomb to San Diego Board of Supervisors re 5G

Good information here

 

 Read full document here

S&P Bearish on 5G, Tesla’s Coil and the T-Mobile Merger

By Renee Parsons

The FCC, the telecoms and cooperating MSM continue their resolute PR campaign to sell 5G to an unsuspecting American public as if the technology is up and running at effortless full capacity.  The truth is that even as ‘spotty’ coverage is being established in large urban markets, the telecoms are well aware that there are fundamental uncertainties yet to be addressed which may take years before widespread distribution can be accomplished.

The industry is driven by the hard reality that consumer indifference to increased data speed may be enough to threaten a return on their $275 billion investment thereby encouraging the telecoms to manufacture an insatiable demand for some new digital bells and whistles.  This is not to say that 5G is in jeopardy of being developed but that its cellular identity may be amended to focus more on the 30 GHz and higher projects.

The reality is, according to Scott Fulton, there is no single, simple way to create a new wireless technology on the scale of 5G.  Fulton compares the upgrade from 4G to 5G as akin to going from a telegraph to a fax machine.  As he explains, a wireless generation is a combination of technologies, all with multiple dimensions and differing standards, that must be integrated to form one mobile technological entity.  The 5G concept is not conducive to plugging one new generation into another but requires a level of co-existence as one merges with another, as new standards integrate with the old standards – all of which may take years.   As we know from the National Security Council power point, 5G is being built from the ground up as a brand new entity.

In other words, creating a new generation of digital technology is a lot more complicated with rollout not ready for some years to come, even as the push for 6G begins to muddy the waters.

In addition, a recent Standard and Poor’s Global Ratings gave credence to the possibility that the telecoms are taking on more than they are able to deliver:  “for U.S. telecommunications companies, we have a cautious view on 5G wireless.  We believe that accelerated deployments could hurt balance sheets that are already stretched because of mergers and acquisitions, mature industry conditions, and competitive pressures.”

In a warning to investors, S&P cited “revenue growth associated with 5G will be constrained” as they questioned whether consumers are willing to spend more just to experience faster speeds on new devices.  S&P continued “our forecast for 5G investment and customer appetite is bearish, so any incremental increase cost or delay should be nonmaterial to the ratings” and that “the bulk of the (Internet of Things) revenue opportunities may not materialize for at least five to 10 years”  as AT&T and Verizon could wait up to ten year for a pay back on their investment.

Tesla’s Coil

In 1891, the brilliant Nikola Tesla, Yugoslavian physicist, engineer and inventor created the Tesla Coil which became the first high voltage transmission of wireless electricity utilizing an electro magnetic force.  The Coil radiated sufficient volts of artificial lightening to illuminate a fluorescent bulb with no electrical wire connection as Tesla also dared theorize on the possibility of death rays.

Some believe that Tesla derived his genius from interstellar spheres as he once suggested that “if you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy frequency and vibration” while displaying an intuitive recognition of the existence of the ionosphere, a premonition of plasma as the fourth state of matter and what today has been dubbed ‘free’ energy.   More famous for revolutionizing our understanding of electricity with his patent for AC (alternating) current, his prescient quote  “…in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration.  I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core but I know that it exists” further suggests a consciousness that had penetrated a “secret core” as another level of reality.  Today, AC is also known as radio frequency waves in the telecommunication world with the difference being the level of frequency on the spectrum.

After having his inventions ridiculed, laughed at and/or stolen by Thomas Edison, Marconi, George Westinghouse and lastly, JP Morgan who failed to grasp the significance of a global wireless communication network, Tesla experienced how a small independent inventor could be squeezed out by the rapacious robber baron class which continues to this day.  After his death in 1943, some of his remaining paperwork was confiscated by the US government and some became enshrined in a museum in Yugoslavia.   As the spirit of Tesla lives on through ingenious inventors of the day, there is reportedly a way to connect an android phone to the internet without wifi service.

T-Mobile Sprint Merger

Speaking of robber barons, the recent Department of Justice approval of a $26 billion mergerbetween T-Mobile and Sprint reduced four major national wireless carriers to three thus creating another impossibly unwieldy mega-monster titan while assuring that Rural America’s Digital Divide will continue.  In a late hour concession to rural consumers, one of the divestiture requirements included the sale of “certain spectrum assets,” 20,000 cell sites, retail storefronts and total use of the T-Mobile network for seven years to Dish, a Colorado-based satellite TV provider as it builds its own 5G network in the expectation of ultimately becoming a fourth major carrier.

With the ink barely dry, T-Mobile CEO John Legere wasted no time in asserting that T Mobile’s  acquisition of Spectrum would offer a “true nationwide capability that this country needs that nobody else has” and that owning all three frequency bands, each containing different properties and ability to transmit data, is crucial to 5G’s success.

Radio Frequency Spectrum is a fixed, finite resource on the electromagnetic spectrum that enables wireless telecommunication to function.   With a radio frequency from 3 KHz to 300 GHz (gigahertz), 5G will utilize low- and mid-band frequencies as well as the higher mm Wavefrequency which is an essential indicator as to the true purpose and intent of 5G.

In other words, while T-Mobile has shrewdly accumulated all three bands to create what it believes will be unbeatable in the marketplace, AT&T and Verizon are no match for their market dominance.  Currently, both Verizon and AT&T own low-band spectrum and the more expensive and complex mmWave.  Neither owns any of the highly desirable, more versatile, mid-band spectrum necessary for urban and rural usage.

Legere then proceeded to attack the two remaining carriers as “dead in the water” and “lying”  as the merger put T-Mobile in the driver’s seat as Sprint was the only telecom to own any of the mid-band spectrum.  The merger gave T-Mobile the opportunity to consolidate all three bands under one company. In addition, at the recent FCC auction in March, T-Mobile spent $840 million to quadruple their mmWave holdings which will facilitate the Internet of Things, AI’s and the Directed Energy Weapons.

With three remaining carriers there is little real expectation that T-Mobile will live up to its earlier promises to provide rural America with cellular service and that 99% of the country will be wired within six years.  The cost for installing thousands of miles of fiber cable and 200,000-plus cell sites required to make a 5G network operational will be an extensive project and cost $60 billion more than proposed.  Still pending is S3157, the Streamline Small Cell Deployment Act which will curtail local government role in locating 5G towers.  If and when 5G makes it to rural America, it promises to be prohibitively expensive.

The last remaining requirement for the merger is final approval by the five-member Federal Communications Commission although their vote is little more than a technicality.  The three Republican appointees to the Commission announced their support, although two of them admitted they had not read the necessary documentation; thereby winning the “Bobbing Head Award of the Week.”

….to be continued

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