Unless one day you could charge your phone once every two days? Or once a week! Like back in the day of the 3310, which had 22 hours of talk time and 31 days of standby. Or you could make the phone smaller/lighter/faster with the extra efficiency. I'm having trouble believing someone here on HN is arguing against improving technology.

I sometimes forget to plug my phone in, maybe after traveling, maybe after drinking haha. I'm already super glad my phone will make it through a second day. Back in the iPhone 3G days? Not so much.

Smaller/lighter/faster phones and battery banks are already available, without 5g. Why do you need 5g specifically? It's value has to exceed the value it destroys. Not all tech developments are net improvements.

Because they'll be even smaller/lighter/faster. That's what efficiency gets you. 5G is more efficient. There's really nothing else to say.

So is it worth rolling out globally a very expensive new network which will cause negative externalities for that?

That depends on whether the expected benefits greatly exceeds the costs of the new network and can offset the supposed negative externalities.

   expected benefits >> costs + supposed negative externalities

You could just as easily have switched those words and that would make just as much sense.

supposed benefits << cost and expected negitive externalities

And that is why everyone is asking the question, rather than blindly accepting 5G as a desirable thing.

This all seems kind of funny to me because these are almost the exact same arguments on why power lines are bad. They kill trees, they kill bugs, they cause kids to be hyper, they cause kids to be depressed, they cause cancer, they misalign the resonant frequency of your brain. A hundred years later I still hear the same arguments but never once has anything borne out.

Can I get an argument against the 5G standard that doesn't amount to, "This may cause harm through an unknowable secondary mechanism despite roughly 100 years of evidence that it is safe."

Infrastructure is intrusive and imposes problems on the poorest people and wildlife who are forced to live near it, I'm not sure why you find that funny. The difference is people need power, not 5g.

If you don't need it then why would you do it? There is no need for an argument to not waste money on useless infrastructure. E.g. Why not build only 4 lane highways instead of a side streets? Because it's unnecessary.

The burden is on you to justify the expense and I don't see any clear justifications as to how this is in anyone's best interest outside of the telcos and <5% of users.

I don't think I need to justify a private company spending private funds but since you insist,

According to Pew Research, 95% of Americans own cellphones. 75% of the world population owns cellphones. When you include other mobile networked devices that number goes up if only a little. Any infrastructure improvement to the wireless telecom infrastructure will benefit the vast majority of the world's population. Even people who insist on using 4G will see major benefits due to less congestion as people migrate over to 5G systems and guess what, the 5G standard includes keeping the 4G system intact and running so this isn't a planned obsolescence but purely an expansion of capability!

Historically, nearly all infrastructure development has yielded significant positive returns not just for the capital holders (Telco's) but for the users as well. While we can certainly extend additional 4G coverage, 5G has a significant number of technical improvements that allow for better backhaul network and network management. Once the initial development costs are paid, there is no reason not to use 5G access standards over 4G.

Most of the 5G mmWave standards are backhaul for the foreseeable future. These enable low cost, low latency deployments to areas which are currently undeserved because of the costs of deployment. This is important because it enables technologies like tele-robotics. It would allow rural areas to invest in a surgical robot at their local hospital and have an expert surgeon working from a more prominent location potentially saving lives.

There are standards for out of channel spectral masks to prevent problems like (including specifically) the one postulated in the article. There exposure standards for safety that the military has been researching for decades as part of their radar work in the mmWave band. I've yet to see any concerns that were not specious and certainly not from anyone familiar with the technology. Most of the concerns are just repeated talking points from dozens of other older technologies that never showed any substance with a helping of, "It's different THIS time." So, you're right, it's not funny, it's sad to see people on Hacker News arguing that 2010 was the ideal level of technology and we shouldn't bother trying to develop more. Hell, it's literally the same argument Comcast makes on why broadband standards shouldn't be raised. "What people have is good enough and they don't want more so you can't justify the costs to improve!"

You're right about the money argument. However, everyone is effected by this infrastructure so the roll out should require some justification regardless of who's money it is.

The 95% of people who own cell phones don't necessarily need internet faster than 4g on their phones and would be happy with that working reliability, which it doesn't.

>It enables technologies like tele-robotics. It would allow rural areas to invest in a surgical robot.

That sounds good and all, but shouldn't we just build out the fiber network so that we have actually reliable infrastructure instead of janky bullshit running on a proprietary cellular modem? What level of reliability should a surgical robot be? I'd say 9 9's for myself to use it. Can a cell signal transmit perfectly 99.9999999% of the time with those low latency numbers ? I don't think so since it's relying on atmospheric conditions and no interference to function.

Ironically, 5G will further reduce incentive for the clearly useful technology of fiber to be deployed at scale.

Everyone buying new phones and changing the infrastructure for marginal gains sounds super efficient.

That will happen anyways.