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February 16, 2005... It was embarrassing watching the cell phone industry shoot itself in the foot yesterday. The scene was a public hearing at the New York City Council in downtown Manhattan on a proposal to maintain and make available a list of all new cell phone antenna sites. Predictably, the mobile phone operators oppose the bill (Intro. No.149-A) and the citizen groups are backing it. Jane Builder, a manager at T-Mobile, called the proposal “anti-business” and “anti-technology,” but there was another reason she did not even want to discuss in a public forum —the security issue. Though Builder kept mum, she had brought along Kathryn Condello who had no problem raising the specter of a terrorist attack on the city’s critical infrastructure. “Since September 11, 2001, we live in a different world,” said Condello. If the bill becomes law, she warned, it would provide “a blueprint for sabotage” with the potential of devastating the City of New York’s telecommunications. Condello was also issuing this overly dramatic —and spurious— warning on behalf of Cingular, Nextel and Sprint.

There was something quite vile about sitting there, only a short distance from the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood, listening to a lobbyist use the 9/11 attacks to further the industry’s economic interests. City Council Member Peter Vallone Jr., the chief sponsor of the bill, berated Condello for using scare tactics. But, in fact, Condello was not scaring anyone, just tossing the industry’s credibility out the window. No one believed her and, odds are, few will believe the industry when, at a second hearing to be held later this week, it will no doubt dismiss the health issue. (Speakers were actively discouraged from addressing RF health effects at yesterday’s hearing.)

The whole terrorism argument is bogus. Anyone who wants to attack a cell tower can easily spot them around the town. But surely there are much more critical telecom targets than some cell phone antenna on top of an apartment building in Astoria. What Condello neglected to mention is that such information is available for a relatively small fee. Tower Maps has 224,817 (at last count) antenna sites in its database. You can find all the towers in a given county for $500.

For years, detailed information on cell phone antennas in a number of European countries has been available for free on the Internet (see MWN, M/J02). For instance, in the U.K. the Office of Communications maintains the Sitefinder database, which not only gives the location of mobile phone towers but also their height, frequency and output power as well as the operating company. The Swiss database also includes radio and TV transmitters, which typically broadcast at much higher power levels. Other countries either already have or are developing their own information systems. Some are even working on providing real-time radiation levels near certain mobile phone towers on the Internet.

The Vallone bill is hardly a draconian proposal. It does not even require the cataloguing of the thousands of existing cell tower sites in New York City. But it’s a start —a small step towards giving the public the information it has every right to have.

 

February 11, 2005... If you are a geek and want to be a cool geek, Griffin Technology and Apple Computer have the just thing for you. The new Griffin AirBase allows you to put Apple’s Airport Express right on top of your desk instead of hidden away in the wall power socket. Once in full view, it will be, according to Griffin, “an elegant artistic statement.” The Airport Express lets you set up a Wi-Fi hot spot so that you can move your laptop around your home (or wherever) and still be connected to the Internet and your printer. Griffin’s marketing plan isn’t based only on aesthetics: When the Airbase is up on your desk and away from a dusty corner, it will increase the effective range of the Airport Express. Our concern is that it will also increase your radiation exposure. We realize that it is a low-power transmitter (with an output power of about 30 milliwatts at 2.4 GHz, giving it an effective range of 50 to 150 feet), but, given all the uncertainties, do you really want it broadcasting into your face whenever you are sitting at your desk?

Last summer, we tried to find out how much microwave exposure a user might get from an Airport Express. We sent a query by e-mail to Tom Neumayr at Apple’s press office. No answer. About a week later we sent a second request this time to Natalie Sequeira, another press aide. No answer. Three weeks later we made one last stab and wrote to Steve Dowling and Todd Wilder in Apple’s corporate media relations department. Again, no answer. We got the message and we turned to other projects. But it all came back when we saw a puff piece on the AirBase in the Circuits section of yesterday’s New York Times: “Now, AirPort Express owners who want to show off the routers have an option...”

Fifteen years ago, Apple executives favored the same head-in-the-sand strategy. They assumed that they could ignore growing public concern over radiation emissions from computer terminals. Their complacency came to a sudden end when Macworld asked in a July 1990 cover story “HEALTH HAZARD: Could Your Computer Be Killing You?” Soon afterwards, David Nagel, an Apple VP was testifying before a Congressional subcommittee assuring Rep. James Scheuer that Apple had a responsibility to look “at ways of reducing emissions from products.” Nagel went on, “We have a role to play in sponsoring research with the government to understand the effects and how to control them.”

But this has now been forgotten and the lesson will have to be learned all over again. In the meantime, why not leave the AirPort Express in that dusty corner.

February 10, 2005... Microwave News has long advocated more research on the potential health effects of power-frequency EMFs and RF radiation. It’s been an uphill battle. EPRI and the CTIA, the two key industry players, are more interested in shutting down research labs than sponsoring those who might be able to make sense of the conflicting results that bedevil this whole business. With respect to mobile phones, Motorola and Nokia have been among the most outspoken in asserting that they have done enough RF studies. (One exception is Sony-Ericsson: Mats Pellback-Scharp recently (January 24) told the Financial Times that, “Every report that comes out calls for more research. I have never heard anyone say on anything, ‘This is fully researched.’” Clearly, Mr. Pellback-Scharp has not been hanging out with Mays Swicord, the director of Motorola’s EMR programs.) Today we received a press release from the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) in Washington that puts industry’s failure to spend any money on health in perspective. The TIA projects that U.S. spending on wireless communications will reach $159 billion this year and will grow to $212 billion by 2008. That’s only in the U.S. By the end of the decade the worldwide total could easily top $1 trillion a year. Five years ago, we humbly pointed out (MWN M/A 2000, page 19) that if each of the then 87 million cell phone users in the U.S. chipped in just one cent a month, we would have $10 million a year for health research. Nothing approaching that has ever been spent in a single year. Today, there are more than twice as many American subscribers: 175 million, according to the CTIA. That same penny a month per user would now bring in $20 million a year. But don’t expect anything to happen. The industry’s “no conclusive proof” mantra is working so well, there is no hope that a research initiative will find any support among telecom executives.


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