For some reason, some of you did not receive last night’s update, and I think it is one of the more important ones. You can find it at: https://stopsmartmetersbc.com/2022-04-25-submission-to-bcuc-re-fortiss-gas-smeter-report-on-emf-early-onset-alzheimers/ If you ever don’t get an update and wonder if I sent one out, I always put it on our website www.stopsmartmetersbc.com under “Newsletters” so you can check there.
A couple of people told me they had trouble opening the abstract of Dr. Pall’s report to get the complete one. You’ll find it here:
1) Last week, Wired Broadband, Inc. and Virginians for Safe Tech hosted a webinar which included an update by Courtney Gilardi, re. Pittsfield’s ban on Verizon’s cell tower, followed by a presentation by Gary Bolton, CEO of Fiber Broadband Association. The video is below but his slides and more information are below in “Letters“. Mr. Bolton is working in both the USA and Canada to make fiber easily available as the technology of the future. He and this association could be a key resource for us.
https://youtu.be/KG_wTmAmG3o (1:56 hr.)
2) A company that was “the hub” of smart homes quit, leaving customers without notice. From the sounds of it, from the video at the link, people could not use some (any?) of their smart appliances without getting new apps. Could be very inconvenient.
Company Turns Off Servers Without Warning Customers in “one of the most notorious smart home shutdowns ever
“Smart home company Insteon and its parent company, Smartlabs Inc., suddenly disappeared last week. In what will probably be remembered as one of the most notorious smart home shutdowns ever, Insteon decided to turn off its cloud servers without giving customers any warning at all, surprise-bricking many smart home devices that relied on the Insteon cloud.”
3) A very interesting youtube shown in the link above.
Ethical hacker shows us how easily smart devices can be hacked and give access to your personal info.
Letters:
(click on photos to enlarge)
Our first speaker was Courtney Gilardi who briefly updated us on the situation with the Verizon 4G cell phone tower in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Courtney said the City of Pittsfield is continuing to get their ducks in a row after issuing the Cease and Desist order the previous week. Verizon had until Friday the 22nd to respond to the order, and we’ve since learned there are some new updates that have transpired. We will be sure to email again as soon as we have more information.
If you’d like to support all the great work Courtney and others are doing up in Pittsfield, MA, you can do so by donating here:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/z9ze96-stop-the-tower
And you can find out more, sign the petition, and like their page here:
https://www.change.org/p/pittsfield-city-council-stop-the-pittsfield-cell-tower
http://www.facebook.com/pittsfieldcell
Next, Gary Bolton, President and CEO of Fiber Broadband Association, the largest trade association dedicated to all-fiber-optic broadband, presented and then took part in Q&A for the rest of the call! (Thank you, Gary!) There was A LOT of information exchanged, so we encourage you to watch the replay of the call in order to catch everything because we are only including some the resources shared below.
Since there is a limit to the size of attachments on our email service, we’ve created a page for the documents Gary shared (his presentation, a FBA white paper, and a recent letter to the Communications and Technology Subcommittee) which you can view and download here:
https://virginiansforsafetech.org/fiber-broadband-association/
https://virginiansforsafetech.org/fiber-broadband-association/
Also mentioned during the call is Gary’s Fiber for Breakfast weekly 30-minute syndicated video/podcast, which you can find out more about here: https://www.fiberbroadband.org/page/fiber-for-breakfast
To find even more information, you can visit the Fiber Broadband Association’s general website here: https://www.fiberbroadband.org/
Another resource Gary mentioned is the book by UVA Professor called ‘Farm Fresh Broadband‘ which is an “An analysis of the failure of U.S. broadband policy to solve the rural–urban digital divide, with a proposal for a new national rural broadband plan” which works to keep the solution about people. Here is a link to the book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/farm-fresh-broadband
For our Europeans on the call, Gary gave us his European counterpart as well as his contact information if you’d like to make the connection: vincent.garnier@ftthcouncil.eu
https://ftthconference.eu
Jenny DeMarco
Virginians for Safe Technology
VirginiansforSafeTech@protonmail.com
www.VirginiansforSafeTech.org
Odette Wilkens
Wired Broadband, Inc.
www.WiredBroadband.org
Sharon Noble, Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters
“One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.” Albert Schweitzer