The Week in 5G: 11/19/2019 — U.S. Lawmakers Aim to Boost 5G Security, Australian Radiation Safety Body Slams 5G Fearmongers
By Ed Biller
U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced this week that the agency will hold a public auction of the C-Band (mid-band, about 500 MHz of spectrum between 3.7 and 4.2 GHz) wireless spectrum for 5G deployment.
The C-Band Alliance (CBA) had proposed relinquishing up to 75 percent of the proceeds of a private spectrum auction to the U.S. Treasury, reports Multichannel News, a move aimed at protecting cable and satellite operators (who currently use the C-Band) and more efficiently delivering money to the Treasury for rural broadband buildout.
Per CNET, Pai said the FCC “plans to auction 280 MHz of the block of spectrum while preserving about 200 MHz that will continue to be used for TV programming.”
Meanwhile, in France, government regulators are likely to delay that nation’s 5G spectrum auction until at least March 2020. Reuters reports that “the delay stems from disagreement between the French finance ministry and the telecoms authority, Arcep, over the exact size of spectrum to be auctioned and the auction floor price.”
Back in the U.S., House of Representatives lawmakers seeking to boost protections for 5G wireless technology approved several measures last week. Specifically, the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology advanced the following to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for consideration. Per a Federal Computer Week (FCW) report:
- “H.R. 4998 would look to reimburse smaller U.S. telecommunications providers with under two million customers for removing Huawei and ZTE gear from their networks,”
- “H.R. 2881… would direct the White House to develop a ‘Secure Next Generation Mobile Communications Strategy’ in consultation with the FCC, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Secretary of Defense.”
- “H.R. 4461… would tap DHS, NTIA, the DNI, the FCC and the FBI to set up a program to share supply chain risk data with communications service providers,” and
- “Resolution 575, approved alongside the bills, would adopt the ‘Prague Proposal’ recommendations developed last May to bake cybersecurity into 5G infrastructure from initial design to implementation.”
In Japan, Finland’s Nokia and Hitachi Kokusai Electric will collaborate on local 5G and private wireless LTE solutions for industrial and government customers, according to a Nokia press release. Spectrum for this “local 5G” will be released in Japan at the end of 2019.
According to the release, Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud platform will be applied to a range of applications, including” video analytics, AI, machine learning and IoT, as well as drones, group communication, and AR/VR. It will also enable autonomous transport vehicles, such as trucks, trains, forklifts and straddle carriers, to increase productivity at factories, utilities, airports and ports.”
Samsung announce this week that, in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Openet, it has demonstrated multi-vendor interoperability in a 5G SA core.
“Samsung said that it integrated its control, user plane network function and orchestrator with HPE’s shared data environment and network functions, and with Openet’s policy and charging solutions,” reports RCR Wireless.
Finally, add the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) to the list of organizations slamming 5G fearmongering as completely unfounded. has returned serve to the myriad submissions made to the
"Current research indicates that there is no established evidence for health effects from radio waves used in mobile telecommunications. This includes the upcoming roll-out of the 5G network. ARPANSA's assessment is that 5G is safe,” states ARPANSA’s response to numerous submissions to that nation’s House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications Inquiry into 5G in Australia that state 5G is a health threat to humans and fauna, according to a ZDNet report.
"While ARPANSA and the [World Health Organisation] recognise that the symptoms of EHS [electromagnetic hypersensitivity] are real and can have a disabling effect for the affected individual, EHS has no clear diagnostic criteria and the science so far has not provided evidence that RF exposure is the cause,” states the ARPANSA response.