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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

If you want to know why America has such shitty infrastructure (especially cities like San Francisco where the density should warrant it), here is Exhibit A. Environmental studies, aesthetic objections,[1] fake health concerns, etc. In the 4.6 years Americans spend to prepare the average Environmental Impact Statement for an infrastructure project, Europeans can build city-wide subway systems or tunnel through mountains.

Other countries are not going to hold up 5G deployment over fake health concerns. If we don't want 5G to be yet another area, like transit and roads, where the US lags woefully behind Europe and Japan, we must fight such distractions.

[1] Remember when San Francisco held up AT&T fiber deployment in the city for years with a lawsuit about ugly fiber boxes? https://stopthecap.com/2011/06/29/san-francisco-still-in-sta...

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> If we don't want 5G to be yet another area, like transit and roads, where the US lags woefully behind Europe and Japan

I don’t necessarily disagree with the crux of your point about infrastructure. However, in the case of 5G, why do we need to “beat” other countries? What’s the rush?

Great article from The Verge titled “Wait, why the hell is the ‘race to 5G even a race?” https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/23/18637213/5g-race-us-leade...

That's all I was saying. 5G is not like other infrastructure such as roads or tunnels or fiber lines. It's a "nice to have". So why can't we do more research and prove ME wrong?

I would love to be proven wrong.

Well, you can't prove that something isn't a health risk. I think the type of research that would satisfy you would take many decades.

I'm much more concerned about how 5G will impact our ability to predict hurricanes. Lives are very much at stake there.

For one thing, 5G is going to be necessary to fully realize things like augmented reality, self-driving cars, and other industries that will make significant economic contributions. Getting started earlier on those is better.

For the other--it's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed that Copenhagen is building a massive new subway system extension for the same money it's costing my state (Maryland) to build a single suburban light rail line. It indicates moral shortcomings of the citizenry--inability to set priorities, inability to cooperate, selfishness, complacency, etc. Same thing with 5G, but add gullibility and hypochondria to the mix.

5G is the absolute last thing standing in the way of self-driving cars.

Wow, do the downvoters wanna explain why I’m wrong even though I work in the autonomous vehicle space? I mean, what do I know?

I assume people misread this:

> 5G is the absolute last thing standing in the way of self-driving cars.

... more as "everything else is working, we are just waiting for 5g then we have self driving"

Instead I read it as "there is so much else not working yet, that 5g is _not even_ on the list of important things", which seems to be more what you were implying?

What does 5G enable that 2G, 3G, 4G, and even WiFi wouldn't have already enabled? There's huge hype for 5G enabled industrial IoT, but how is this any different from connecting the devices to WiFi or a 2G/3G/4G network? Latency is thrown around a lot, but considering the latency between my laptop (which is 8 years old, mind you) and my WiFi router is less than a millisecond, I don't see the point.

Haven't personally looked into it, but I've heard and seen that a big point is allowing much more devices on a network without straining the network as much. 4g at a crowded venue is generally unusable, 5g might change that.

5G will also enable smart devices to connect over cellular instead of wifi, increasing how much control the device maker has over the device and probably overall increasing connection reliability.

^Although, WiFi 6 is also aiming to solve this problem so I guess these are competing protocols at this point.

https://www.lifewire.com/5g-wireless-4155905

> For one thing, 5G is going to be necessary to fully realize things like augmented reality, self-driving cars, and other industries that will make significant economic contributions.

How, precisely?

5G won't be anywhere near low-latency enough to actually offload processing for these types of devices. (Not to mention, I'd really worry about what happens when a car loses connection.)

> For the other--it's embarrassing.

I appreciate your feelings, but we need to collectively get over ourselves. "Embarrassment" shouldn't be driving billion dollar decisions.

If we need to channel the emotion, let's do where the needs are explicit, like public transit.

> How, precisely?

In dense urban areas, 4G cell networks don't have sufficient capacity to enable large numbers of people to be using high-bandwidth services. E.g. if there is a road anomaly, such as construction, one of the solutions self-driving-car makers have invoked is a human remote driver jumping in. You can do that with a few cars on 4G, but not at scale with dozens of cars that might be simultaneously blocked by the same anomaly.

> I appreciate your feelings, but we need to collectively get over ourselves. "Embarrassment" shouldn't be driving billion dollar decisions. If you need to channel the emotion, do so with regard to things like public transit where the need is much more explicit.

Less than 5% of Americans use public transit. 96% of Americans use cell phones. Cellular is far more important than public transit.

A lot of the 5g connection to drones, self-driving and artificial intelligence is bullshit. But there is some connection in the sense that they are sort of both unknown. In theory if you had some sort of early self-driving personal rapid transit system, or some freight variety, it would make things easier if you knew you had enough bandwidth and low latency to effectively remote control them.

> it would make things easier if you knew you had enough bandwidth and low latency to effectively remote control them.

I suppose it can't hurt as an additional safety feature, but if we're considering this a requirement for the technology, that makes me very scared, given the inherent unreliability of any type of cellular connection.

I feel like I can’t be the only one that doesn’t see “national embarrassment” as a good reason to do anything. It just doesn’t feel like any kind of logical argument about anything.

The radiation and cancer concern is categorically different than "not in my backyard".

If you can't see that these are totally unrelated, then I don't know what to say.

Fiber lines are completely different than "hey these rats that are constantly exposed to 5G radiation that's 20 yards away are acting all messed up".

Meritless aesthetic concerns and fake health concerns are in the same bucket. It's just ways to hold up progress. (And in this case, NIMBYs are seizing on fake health concerns to reinforce their case against deployment because they think the base stations are ugly.)

>fake health concerns

Can you explain why it is fake? Non-ionizing radiation does have an effect on us. Just because it isn't melting our organs doesn't mean that we aren't effected negatively by it. The independent research shows this, doesn't it?

Numerous studies show no increase in cancer risk from cellular. In many respects, millimeter waves are even safer, because they can't penetrate through the skin as easily. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/science/5g-cellphones-wir...; https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2019/04/30/is_5g_w...

Lawyers strive to become as good as possible at aggressively defending the objectively wrong opinion. He's either doing this as some sort of devil's advocate exercise or he's actually getting ready to defend 5G technology in court.

Alas, I'm just a nerd who likes radios and infrastructure, and is fed up with NIMBYs and feelers.

EDIT: regarding "who stands to gain"--consumers! It's very odd to me that I'd have to defend the technology upgrade treadmill on HN of all places. In October, Apple's going to come out with the A13 chip. Is anyone going to wonder "who benefits?" Or ask "why do we need it?" No, we'll all understand that the A12 is obsolete trash now. That's how this industry works.

The question is "who stands to gain"?

I can't see 5G benefiting consumers at all. If you're on a 4G network, you already see no issues with streaming video.

Who is 5G even for? It's a solution seeking a problem.

It's a weapon disguised as communications tech to keep the sheep calm while it's deployed. They want to be able to easily target any coordinates in 3D space from multiple towers at once with lethal microwave beams to boil the organs of any troublemakers who speak out against the chosen ones. Just don't make any more problematic posts and you'll be fine.

These 'concerns' have been around as long as cell phone service has existed for every single frequency and power level. I remember my mom worrying about it back when stuff was at 1G & 2G levels.

You have to realize that "high" power radio & other artificial EM transmissions have been going on ever since you were born pretty much everywhere. AM Radio, FM Radio, "wireless" TV, and todays cellphones and wifi base stations. Not to mention all the other radio traffic that is more specialized, like airplanes, HAM radio, police & emergency services, the military, the light you see from your lightbulbs, the EM radiation that emits from your electric wires running through your house, street or nearby electric transformer stations on and on.

None of it has resulted in secret harm and 5G will be no different. The stuff that is harmful will have a lot of warnings around it and won't be secret. Such as UV exposure from the sun.

Ignore downvoters. I wish people worried more about things that can actually kill them, like bad diet, lack of exercise, or UV exposure.

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