Dear editor,
In response to Lori Curran’s letter in your June 11 issue (Say “no” to 5G in our neighbourhoods), I would like to say “no” to her and her group.
She is wrong on so many counts.
First of all she implies that 5G technology is too new for anyone to understand its effects on public health.
That is false.
5G, and all its predecessors from the first “brick” cell phones of the 1980s to the most recent models, use what is called non-ionizing (microwave) radiation to make the connection between cellphones and towers.
This mobility is what makes these devices so useful in all our daily lives.
The only significant difference with 5G is in its capacity to handle exponentially larger volumes of traffic.
The health hazard that any of these technologies might pose is with the power levels of the microwave signal they use, and none of them have ever come close to anything that should concern us.
Ms. Curran goes on to claim that fiber optic technology somehow affords us an alternative to 5G.
This is another outright falsehood and it betrays her abysmal ignorance of the entire matter.
Fibre optic cable does a splendid job of replacing the millions of pairs of copper wires that made up the backbone of the original land-line telephone system. But it can’t do anything about the critical wireless (microwave) link between cellphone and tower that makes 21st Century communications possible.
That’s where 5G comes in to exploit the quantum leap in capacity that fibre optics represent.
So no, Ms. Curran, 5G is not some totally new and untried technology.
It has been around in various forms for decades and the effects of microwave radiation on public health are in fact well known and understood.
It simply does not pose a significant health threat to us.
Also, while fibre optic technology can certainly give us the throughput we want, it can’t give us the mobility and flexibility that we also need.
If Ms. Curran and her group are going to continue making public statements on the subject then I suggest that they have a moral obligation to acquaint themselves with the facts first.
However, having said these things I must add that 5G is definitely a potential threat to everyone’s privacy and security.
The system’s ability to acquire, process and distribute enormous volumes of any kind of information about anyone and anything to whomever and for whatever purpose is truly mind-boggling and should concern everyone. And finally, I say this with only such insight as comes from 39 years of training and experience in microwave and communications technology.
Ray Cerniuk
Stettler, Alta.
