Like many of you, I shopped yesterday, Thanksgiving, online. I saw a gift. When I went to check out, it asked me for a cell phone number. They would send me a text to confirm that it was really me making the order. There is no cell phone service where I live. I could give them my landline number, but it cannot accept a text message. It shows the widening gap between those of us who live in remote areas versus those who live in cities. The current move to 5G will make it even worse. The 5G system will move up to higher frequencies than are now used. Those frequencies cannot penetrate many things. That is the reason in cities there will be small repeaters almost everywhere. I recently read a story where they were putting a repeater on every light post in the city. One of the things that these frequencies won’t penetrate are trees particularly if they are leafed out. Law enforcement too has been forced to move up in frequencies. They have been forced to add more repeaters. The little walkie-talkies the officers carry no longer work all the time, so in an attempt to solve that problem they built a high power repeater into every squad car. Still, there are times when the Sheriff’s deputies cannot talk to the dispatcher whether it is because they are in a barn or in someone’s home. The law enforcement dilemma illustrates the problem that 5G service presents to all rural peoples.
In it an attempt to get phone service here, we offered all the cell phone companies free land to put up a cell tower. They all refused telling us that there are too few people here to make it profitable. However, cell phone companies are pretty smart. The start of the Mississippi River is not that far from my home. It’s located in Itasca State Park. There is cell phone service there because of tourism. Moved a few miles away from the park and there is no cell service.
I don’t miss not having a cell phone. In fact, I have one that I use when I’m traveling. It cost me just $25 a month. From what I have seen, I do not see anything I am missing by not having cell phone service here in my home. My other neighbors, bear, deer, and wild turkeys, also do not seem to miss not having cell service.
2 Responses
Why have we ever upgraded if it costs more to do for what benefit?
The benefit is much higher speeds on your cell phone. Cell phones are taking the place of computers in the home because they are computers. You will be able to download an entire movie in just seconds. Here’s the technical part – as you go up in frequency you get an increase in bandwidth. That means as you go up in frequency you can get faster speeds on things you want to download. Currently there are two cell phone bands. One is around 1 GHz and the other is around 5 GHz. The new upgrades will use 35 GHz. You can see how that will allow faster downloads. For the cell phone companies, it means they can have many more users at the same time. I hope I didn’t confuse you.