All television ads annoy me, some infuriate me, but the one they started airing a couple weeks ago induced hyperventilation. It was T-Mobile, announcing their inauguration of the country’s first and only 5G cellphone network. In took this personally because I have said repeatedly here that this was never gonna happen. Was I (gasp) wrong? Or are they lying? You want three guesses?

As it has been hyped for lo, these many months, 5G (or fifth generation, aka the Next Big Thing) cell phones use extremely high frequency radio waves, called “millimeter waves” that permit data to be transferred at extremely high rates of speed. There is no evidence at all that the downtrodden masses are crying out for more smartphone bandwidth with which to watch kitten on Facebook, but the marketers are convinced they can make us want it, and spend heavily to get it.

The marketers are desperate. Global sales of smartphones have been declining for a year and a half (there was a slight upward tick in Q4 2019) despite blandishments including three (count ‘em three!!) cameras per phone, foldable screens (that break almost immediately) and bigger batteries. No? Okay, how about 5G?

The reason I have said frequently that significant 5G networks are never going to happen is that there are some problematic things about mmWaves, including:

They are extremely short range. Anything like full coverage requires a transmitter every thousand feet. As far as I’m concerned, game over right there. And even with that density of transmitters the signal is easily blocked by walls, hands, etc.

They may constitute a health hazard. They are close to the wavelength used in microwave ovens. While the mmWaves won’t cook us or pop our popcorn, Scientific American reports that more than 500 peer-reviewed studies have found “ harmful biologic or health effects ” from exposure to radio frequency radiation.

Handsets capable of handling mmWaves require so much power that they need a really large and bulky battery to get through the day, and when in use they overheat. A lot. As one reviewer put it, “Probably not hot enough to ignite your battery (probably), but enough to generate a definite burning sensation in your pants pockets.” The review went on to observe that “the handset industry is using a tried-and-tested method for dealing with this problem – ignoring it and hoping it goes away.”

So how it it, you may well ask, that T-Mobile claims to be operating a fully realized national 5G network? Have they solved all these problems? Installed all these transmitters? Or are they lying? You don’t get three more guesses.

Turns out there are two bands of frequencies identified by whoever the authorities are as 5G, low-band and high-band. The high-band frequencies are the ones everyone has been talking about as enabling the features of 5G. Well, T-Mobile has used the low-band frequencies, which travel much farther but do not have anything like the bandwidth of mmWaves. In fact, most of what T-Mobile is calling its 5G network is operating at 4G speeds or even slower. In New York City, not an inconsequential market for whatever this is, the T-Mobile “5G” network tested at download speeds of 28 Mbps while the standard 4G networks offered 128 Mbps.

In the America of Donald Trump and High Tech and Big Oil etcetera, if you want something to be so, you simply announce that it is so, and demand compensation for providing it. Consequences? There are no consequences. Consequences, like laws and taxes, are for little people.

“Cell Phone Antenna Tower Blue Sky #CellPhoneTower #CellPhoneAntenna #CreativeCommons pics by Mike Mozart of TheToyChannel and JeepersMedia on YouTube.” by JeepersMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0