> but wearable connected medical devices are and will be a big thing

And most are served perfectly by Bluetooth Low Energy, using a smartphone as local compute, storage and network uplink. The few cases where that's not ideal are so few that they may as well use a regular 4G uplink without much downside (it's not like they need the bandwidth or will create a high device density)

You can already stream online courses and watch educational videos with 4g... same with wireless medical devices. What does 5g offer that 4g already hasn't?

5g has higher capacity, but shorter range, so cells will need to be closer together, i.e. greater density - therefore location tracking precision will appear to improve, so the big corporations will be better able to finely tune targeted ads in HD to a more specific demographic of consumers.

5G offers:-

- bigger numbers and promise of a brighter future for consumers that are impressed by that kind of thing and are happy to trade their privacy for perceived benefits / status.

- And probably some more tangible benefits for those who would attempt to track or advertise as much as possible to monetize the masses.

- And as you clearly understand, nothing particularly beneficial to the rest of us, but we'll join in when eventually forced to through one upgrade or another as usual.

There might be incidental location disclosure, but even with 2/3/4G the network operator has pretty good location information, typical precision being 10s of meters or even less.

Lower latency

Ok, everyone says this. But by how much? Half a second? I load a video on youtube now with maybe 3 out of 5 bars and it starts playing in one maybe two seconds. I need to buy a new phone for what now? I need to agree to higher taxes or cut community spending in my city for what now? So my video goes from a 1 second load to half a second?

Time to video start is a bandwidth thing. Latency is the time it takes a packet to do a round trip. Typical 4G latency in the US is about 50mS and 5G is not yet faster because it’s still heavily reliant on the 4G infrastructure. It is expected to drop to 1mS as the rollout continues. This will have a significant impact on interactive content.

I think you’re conflating a few things though.

1) 5G spec improvements which do exist and are measurable today 2) your perceived value of those improvements 3) the FCC mandates in the US, which is currently being challenged

You might not want the improvements. Others may. The real issue, IMHO, is the FCC mandates. Although the challenge has a risk for technology too. If the courts agree that there is a possible health risk to RF I have no idea what kind of pandora’s box that opens.

The article is about opposition to small cell 5G pole mounted antenna, which are millimeter wave transmitters to replace legacy telephone and perhaps cable. These things will be used with fixed antennas, as they cannot penetrate buildings.

5G with traditional towers is completely different and not an issue.