1) A Safer Tech Future: Here’s EHT’s Action-Packed Plan for 2021
(click on photo to enlarge)
“2020 was a critical year in the hustle to slow the rush toward 5G. More nations started investigating 5G and ways to protect their residents. The Appeals Court for the District of Columbia agreed to hear EHT’s case against the FCC’s dishonest rejection of modern science. More and more individuals began realizing that technology’s benefits also come with significant downsides, including potentially grave effects on our mental and physical health.
As the science overwhelmingly demonstrates the biological effects of wireless radiation, EHT is stepping up its activities in 2021 to ensure that more individuals, agencies, and organizations are informed and protected from the telecom industry’s dogged pursuit of wireless deployment and densification.”
2) The 6 GHz range of the spectrum has been used by utilities and other services for years but recently, a portion of it has been siphoned off to the telecoms to use for 5G. The initial users argue that there is great potential for harmful interference to occur and are filing a lawsuit as a consequence. The telecoms are depending on using both lower frequencies (in the 700 MHz range) and in the 6 GHz range for 5G initially.
This source says that, according to ISED, there currently are no plans for commercial use of 6GHz range but that could change depending on what the US does. Right now, this range is used for satellites for broadband and TV).
https://www.semfionetworks.com/blog/the-state-of-6ghz-in-canada
Utilities, others tell court FCC ignored evidence as lawsuit over wireless airwaves proceeds.
“The brief points out that the FCC order did not find that the requested safeguards would be infeasible or costly, “nor did it dispute that governing law prohibits opening the floodgates to hundreds of millions of unlicensed 6 GHz devices if there is a significant risk that at least some of them will interfere with some of [the] petitioners’ licensed operations.”…
They argue in the brief that the FCC assumed away less common but highly relevant real-world scenarios, such as situations where indoor devices may be used near windows or behind thin walls that do not absorb or weaken device signals and thus “will do little or nothing to protect nearby microwave links.”…
Tech industry behemoths have contended that the order was necessary to aid 5G deployment and cure perceived Wi-Fi congestion as they looked to widely market a slew of new, inexpensively produced wireless products. The order effectively increased the amount of spectrum available for Wi-Fi by a factor of nearly five, creating greater capacity to support more devices and faster speeds.”
3) A US member sent me this good news article as a follow-up to the article in last night’s update [2) – https://stopsmartmetersbc.com/2020-12-29-telecoms-as-utilities-in-us/] about telecoms being a utility, and that the fiber optic cables, copper lines and wires that make up the telecom infrastructure are part of the utility. Community-owned networks could use the fiber optic cable to provide cheaper, better, and safer internet access that would be controlled by the community, with profits paid to the community. We need to educate Canadians about the benefit of such a network and push local politicians to support similar efforts.
The Quiet Good News of the 2020 Elections: Municipal broadband is expanding
“The voters in Chicago and Denver overwhelmingly voted for community broadband in a referendum in Chicago that directs the city to “ensure that all the city’s community areas have access to broadband Internet.” It’s a nonbinding resolution, but it gives the city the authority to consider broadband as a utility, potentially allowing for community-run networks. The voters in Denver—83.5% of them—declared the city should be exempt from a 2005 law passed by Colorado that restricts towns and cities from building their own networks. That ALEC-inspired law had a loophole in the case of Colorado, one that lets cities and towns opt out of those restricts if the residents demand it by vote. There are now 140 communities in Colorado that have spurned the law and championed citizen-built broadband….
Arkansas and Connecticut have lifted restrictions on municipal broadband, and Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington State have taken recent legislative action that’s municipal broadband-friendly.”
Sharon Noble, Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters
“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.'” Alfred Lord Tennyson
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