We've all heard about 5G in the news, how it's coming, how it will be a huge advance in technology and how it will bring about big changes in how we connect with the world and each other. It sounds so great and it's all the buzz about how it will bring about great changes in our lives. But is this a good thing or another assault on our privacy and health?

When we look at 5G we see that the term means different things depending on the carrier. Verizon has 5G that is very fast with download speeds up to one gigabyte per second. That's an incredible ten times faster than most wi-fi connections. However, the coverage so far is spotty and you can't count on maintaining the fast connection on the street and it's virtually non-existent in the home. Again 5G as it is being used right now can't travel very far and is blocked by walls and foliage so in order to achieve a city-wide roll out there would need to be nodes for coverage on every block. Verizon plans to turn on a low-band 5G network to increase coverage but the speeds won't be much faster than a regular LTE phone used today. 

AT&T and T-Mobile's low-band networks are in the 600 megahertz and 850 megahertz bands, effectively the same area of spectrum as existing LTE however, they're new bands of spectrum that aren't already clogged up with existing customers. These use new transmission technologies which means that these low-band 5G networks can offer faster speeds than LTE even though they're basically using the same spectrum bands as LTE. They can transmit over a much wider range than other types of 5G and that's why T-Mobile can claim to have nationwide 5G coverage. 

T-Mobile now owns Sprint and these use mid-band 5G located at the 2.5 gigahertz range of the spectrum. This is faster than low-band 5G, about the same area of the electromagnetic spectrum as your home wifi. Midband is higher frequency and more bandwidth than low-band 5G, however it's far slower than millimeter wave, which is the ultra-fast 5G.

What we are calling millimeter wave is at about 30 gigahertz, much higher frequency than any other types of 5G and offers blazing fast speeds. These are being used by Verizon and in limited areas, T-Mobile, and AT&T. These radio waves are between one and 10 millimeters in wavelength and do not pass through objects like walls or buildings easily which means that the range is very limited.

The changes in the usage of bandwidth are interesting but only part of the story. Other improvements in 5G, come from new transmission technology and techniques to improve connectivity. Carrier aggregation combines multiple LTE bands into one data stream for faster speeds, and MIMO antennas, or multiple inputs multiple outputs, use antenna arrays, made up of lots of little antennas stationed at intervals for improved connectivity.

                                                           

                     What is 5G?

Remember the old cell phones back in the 80s? If you are too young and have never seen one they were a big bulky brick-shaped phone that was virtually indestructible. You could literally drive over it (by accident of course) and it would still work. This was the beginning of cellular networks and used 1G or 1^st generation technology and it only included making phone calls to limited areas. When 2G came along the additional bandwidth enable users to start transmitting and receiving data, text messages and pictures. As the systems became more advanced these could eventually access the internet, enter the iPhone. 3G brought about better access and faster speeds and then 4G LTE enabled the downloading of larger files bringing on music and movies and whole programs into your phone which is now a small computer.

So what is 5G? The 5^th generation of phones and internet are being touted as a major advance in speed and access and purports to enable connectivity across the technology world via the IoT or Internet of things. All of these technologies are based on the same science which accesses the EM spectrum or electromagnetic spectrum sometimes called Maxwell’s Rainbow. In the low end of the spectrum or wavelength, we have radio waves and this stretches through microwaves, infrared into visible light and beyond into x-rays, gamma rays and the unknown cosmic rays. AM radio for example operates between 540 and 1600 kilohertz. This is a low energy wave but can travel for great distances. FM transmits between 88 and 108 megahertz with more bandwidth and better quality but with decreased range.

Cell phone transmission has evolved using increasing bandwidth but the systems follow the same pattern. With more bandwidth you need an increase in power to achieve strong signal transmission. The 1^st generation cell phones introduced in 1987 operated on the 800 MHz bandwidth, an analog system that was a voice-only network. 2G brought digital transmission in 1993 and operated on the 900 MHz spectrum, later adding the 1800 MHz band. #G came along in 2005 and combined 2100 MHz with 900 MHz to achieve more coverage since the 2100 MHz band suffered far more attenuation. 4G LTE or Long Term Evolution operates between 700 MHz and 2500 MHz using the same type of combination frequency carrying technology in order to achieve broad coverage.

5G will use a higher frequency range than previous networks and will operate on up to three frequency bands, low, medium and high. There will be up to three different types of cells, each requiring specific antenna designs and providing different download speeds. The low bands will operate at 600 to 850 MHz giving downloads of 30-250 megabits per second, about the same as 4G cellphones. Mid-band 5G will use microwaves of 2.5-3.7 GHz allowing speeds of 100-900 Mbit/s. High-band will use frequencies of 25-39 GHz and will achieve downloads in the gigabit per second range.

Learn more coming soon.

5G Linked to Significant Health Concerns

In 2015, more than 230 scientists engaged in the study of biological and health effects of non-ionizing EMFs in 41 nations signed an international appeal to the United Nations, calling for protection from non-ionizing EMF exposure due to evidence of health effects even at low levels.29

Two years later, more than 180 doctors and scientists from 35 countries signed a petition30 to enact a moratorium on the rollout of 5G due to the potential risks to wildlife and human health, citing research showing an increased risk for:

• Cancer
• Cellular stress and increase in harmful free radicals
• Genetic damage
• Reproductive problems31,32,33
• Neurological disorders

News About 5G and Your Health

What Science Says About 5G

A 2-page fact sheet19 on 5G can be downloaded from the Environmental Health Trust’s website. There, you can also access a long list of published scientific studies showing cause for concern.20 Remember, 5G will result in an exponential increase in RFR exposure, and there are already thousands of studies demonstrating biological effects from low-intensity electromagnetic fields (EMFs).

More than 1,800 studies summarized in the BioInitiative Report21 (2007 and 2012) show immune system effects, neurological effects, cognitive effects and much more. For example, cumulative daily EMF exposure from cellphones and Wi-Fi is associated with cancer,22,23 altered brain development in children and reproductive damage in both sexes.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/11/13/5g-emf-exposure.aspx