Page 33 - Summer 2019 Journal

demands, toxic waste from the manufacture of electronic devices and significant disruptions of the labor market due to artificial intelligence (AI), with machines making decisions.
Nonetheless, because services that include a wireless component are minimally taxed and regulated (compared to wired services), wire- less services are extremely profitable to telecom corporations, and the deployment of more wire- less technologies continues apace. Machine- to-machine communication is becoming more widespread as technologies operate via the Internet of Things (IoT). Entertainment, GPS and self-driving vehicles operate through the Cloud, as do a growing number of educational, medical and banking systems. Utilities have also deployed millions of “smart,” wireless transmit- ting meters to track electricity use.
All of these developments are generating in- creased data traffic—and according to the tele- com industry, more data traffic requires more infrastructure. Promoters of 5G and the IoT tell us that we “need” 5G so that we can download a video in less than ten seconds, receive a message on our phone from a chipped diaper letting us know that our baby needs changing or get mes- saged by a chipped orange juice carton telling us that it is time to replenish. With 5G and the IoT, a toilet will even be able to analyze stool samples and send the data to your doctor.
Let me unpack what this means for munici- palities and households.
THE ROLE OF FIBER OPTICS
Until 2016, businesses and households
considered “fiber optics to the premises” as
the safest, fastest, most energy-efficient and most secure way to access the Internet. Of- ten encased in protective conduit, fiber optic cables rely on pulsing light on thin strands of glass fiber and carry multiple frequencies for telecommunications. Effectively, fiber cables offer unlimited bandwidth.12 They do not emit radiofrequency (RF) radiation. They also tend to withstand weather catastrophes better than wireless systems.
What the public may not realize is that wireless telecom infrastructure is not entirely wireless. For years, wireless providers have run fiber optic cables from their core network to the large towers that support cellular antennas. To deliver voice, Internet and data wirelessly, fiber optics’ light waves convert data (via a digital electronic process) to RF waves. The system’s “last hop” (from the cell tower to individual, mobile devices) is delivered wirelessly.
In the same way that radio stations pay the FCC a licensing fee for a frequency band on the electromagnetic spectrum, telecom corporations pay the FCC to lease frequencies that deliver their wireless services (voice, Internet and data). In the last few decades, however, the available spectrum has nearly filled up. In the iPhone’s first three and a half years, AT&T alone claimed that its data traffic grew eighty-fold!12 5G tech- nology (which, remember, provides wireless access) combines fiber optics and millimeter RF waves (a previously untapped portion of the spectrum) and cannot operate without fiber optics. The industry views this combination as the only way to create more usable frequencies for our increasing wireless data traffic.
Wireless services are extremely profitable
to telecom corporations.
GET AN ON-OFF SWITCH
I have heard from many households that when they get Internet service, the provider installs an antenna on their roof that effectively makes it a Wi-Fi hotspot—without the customers’ permission. I have also heard that in some areas, only wireless Internet service is available.
In some instances, if a family turns their Wi-Fi off while they sleep (as many physicians advise), only a repair person from the Internet provider can restore their Internet access. Certainly, every customer should be able to turn off the Wi-Fi at their own home and turn it back on at will. Service providers should be obliged to explain how to do this.
An electrical engineer with a medical implant told me that even when his Internet provider said that his Wi-Fi was shut off, his meters told him that it was on. “Every person deserves the right not to be exposed to EMR. Every household deserves the ability to shut off Wi-Fi with a simple switch,” this engineer says, plainly. “Probably,” he adds, “these rights need FCC and FDA [Food and Drug Administration] mandates.”
Finally, telecom providers should also be obliged to explain how to encrypt Wi-Fi and cell service so that customers can protect their privacy and prevent others from using or eavesdropping on their Wi-Fi.
SUMMER2019
Wise Traditions 31