Since 5G is trending (in my head), an anecode that was told to me when I visited the operations centre of a large French mobile phone operator a few years ago.
I asked one of the engineers who worked on mast deployment if they got a lot of opposition. /1
I asked one of the engineers who worked on mast deployment if they got a lot of opposition. /1
"Oh yes", he said. "For example, the best place to site a mast in many villages is on the school roof. It actually minimises the amount of radiation hitting the school roof, because there's a blind spot underneath it, but everyone objects." /2
"So the mayor comes and says, 'Why not put the mast by the water tower, that's nice and high', so we do that."
"Then everyone who can see the water tower calls the mayor and says they have headaches and they're definitely going to get cancer". /3
"Then everyone who can see the water tower calls the mayor and says they have headaches and they're definitely going to get cancer". /3
"The mayor calls a town meeting and everyone shouts at us and tells us how bad their headaches are. And the mayor demands to know what we're going to do to make the headaches stop. And we say, well, we haven't switched the mast on yet". /4
(It takes quite a while after erecting the mast for it to be operational.)
"And the meeting ends, people go back home, their headaches stop, and we switch the mast on, and everyone is happy except if they're in a bad reception area and they ask us to turn up the power". /5
"And the meeting ends, people go back home, their headaches stop, and we switch the mast on, and everyone is happy except if they're in a bad reception area and they ask us to turn up the power". /5
"And then two years later we go to deploy a new generation, and the same people start getting headaches before we've installed it, and we go round it again".
This was about 10 years ago. This guy had been through this 3 or 4 times in some places. /6
This was about 10 years ago. This guy had been through this 3 or 4 times in some places. /6
So everyone has been killed about 7 times over by mobile phone masts already. That or the brain tumours that they were going to get from holding their phones too close to their heads for 10 minutes a day. /7
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people have killed or injured themselves or others by phoning or texting while driving, but for some reason the same people who think that telcos are out to give them cancer also think they can drive with one hand and half their brain. /8
BTW, telco executives and engineers live in areas with 5G reception like everyone else, just as pharma executives die from cancer even though their companies are apparently hiding a $5 cure. Maybe those execs and engineers are prepared to die for the shareholders. /9 /end
anecode? FFS
