Dr. Timothy Schoechle PhD.
Communications & technology expert
International consultant in computer engineering and standardization
Former faculty member at the University of Colorado Engineering College , Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy
Author of books  “Getting Smarter About the Smart Grid”  and   “Reinventing wires: the future of landline and networks,” they are uniquely positioned to help to provide the roadmap for real solution with the problems associated with 5G and small cells

WHAT IS 5G ?
5G means 5th generation of cellular network, about every 10 years  there is new generation of cellar phones 5G is becoming operational.

BENEFITS  OF 5G:  goal is to have higher speed of connection and lower delay in message response, new applications for internet of things, vehicles, virtual reality, faster video
WHAT ARE OTHER HIDDEN REASONS/REAL REASONS: need to sell more phones, more chips and collect more data, this is what industry is about, statistics on sale is back off lately, 2 years decline in developed world, they need people to buy new phone and more chips, find the way to get consumer more addictive. Money-control-profit and data scheme is priority function of the whole network.  Advertising and targeting you, collecting data on you, this is 5G about too.

CONCERNS ABOUT 5G AND DIRECTION:  wireless industry is going number of concerns, 4G +5G are tight together because 5G doesn’t provide voice service and  4G will  be used for coordinating 5G (4GLTE -Long Term Evolution), 5G will be high speed data download part, managed by 4G
5G will use the whole new frequency range, which has unknown characteristics, that’s what they call millimeter waves ( GHz), range and characteristics are so different from frequencies used before 1G under to 900 MHz, 5G will be up 20- 30 GHz in much shorter range, instead of 3-5 miles range only 200 feet, as a result  they have to put more cell towers, cellular transmitters every 100 feet or less, entire environment, every neighborhood will be saturated with millimeter waves frequencies in order to get coverage.

The industry got the legal right to put these things on every street, every lamp… everywhere where they want without paying the full cost to the community ! They do create strategies, one of these is ALEC organization which create model legislation - American Legislative Exchange Council
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives who draft and share model legislation for distribution among state governments in the United States.
ALEC provides a forum for state legislators and private sector members to collaborate on model bills—draft legislation that members may customize and introduce for debate in their own state legislatures.
4th model of legislation adapted in 20 states in 2005  to preempt local regulation, as back up they got Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the same set of rules on national level, chairman of FCC came from Verizon.
Everything is challenged in court right now, people are finally woke up to the fact this was happening, preemption of right of local communities to regulate their health safety and environmental quality, this is issue of questions about Electromagnetic Radiation already, there is a potential hazard from existing cell phones and 5G is adding new frequencies on the top, so this is complete mystery what will happen in biological effects, health effects, massive experiment on human population.

2019 senator Blumenthal was grilling representatives  from WIFI industry,  they admitted in Senate Hearing  they haven’t done any testing, don’t plan to, no budget for it  and are proceeding anyway

WHAT’S YOUR THOUGHT ON ROLLING 5G OUT
They operate on decades long data, based on microwaves and heating effects, but there are also other effects non thermal, non ionizing radiating effect create hazard.  FCC has no capability , interest to study biological issues, FCC is lost in the woods here.
Massive  increase in data harvesting now associated with 5G,  health and environmental effect we don’t really know about, but industry is  proceeding 5G anyway, meanwhile independent testing is indicating there is a PROBLEM HERE!

FROM “ REINVENTING WIRES” “ The internet has  become one of the defining technologies in our society, it is our center medium for commerce, communication and more importantly for a public discourse, engagement and democratic government. However it has been hijacked by commercial motivations that have come to redefine and constrain the availability, quality, content and media of high speed access in the US”

WHAT IS A DANGER  about hijacking INTERNET BY COMMERCIAL INTEREST?
Original concept of internet was a little bit different what we have today – communication. By far primarily business model of internet now is advertising
Books “ Antisocial media,"  Surveillance capitalism”- talk about concept of this business model like “Frankenstein machine taking over,”  gigantic companies have unbelievable political power and wealth and are reshaping our whole society.
Disparity between rich and poor, who has access to internet and WIFI and who not, they all have to have access at least thru optical fiber and not only for commercial purposes, but what city and local government needs to add to it.
Triopoly-US specific -completely privatized system.  Back in 80^'s Telecom system was monopoly, which prevented technical innovation. The idea was to brake up the monopoly and get innovation back in the system.  It worked then.  TELECOM ACT in 1996  and  in the name of innovation WIFI was unleashed. They are different regulations for wired system and wireless and WIFI basically got a free ride'. And all telecom companies converted themselves to WIFI companies.
Restructure of industry was unregulated capitalism  which created new triopoly which is more powerful than monopoly
Verizon – AT&T – Cable industry, TRIOPOLY which dominates internet access, maintain artificially high prices, pure service and constrains any kind of innovation

WHERE DO YOU SEE DRIVERLESS CAR AMBITION GOING ?
Skeptical about it.
2 Aspects – driverless car itself, autonomous vehicle and the other is use of 5G. What it is good for? Who want to have it?  There is no market for it. People love to drive their cars. Who is going to buy it? Only very few segment of people. There is no solid business model behind it. Industry is creating this idea as another way to sell integrative circuit in the car or to collect data on people. Also technical requirements for it are huge and  require very precious mapping per square inch basically and keeping it current. Economics of it don’t make any sense. It sounds good to the stock market, selling stock to the stock market. Google started this by frighting car companies in the thinking the car of the future is going to be about electronics cram in the car, they frighting the car industry into join their club -world with software, apps and chips.  It’s like giant Ponze scheme. Nobody really know what is needed for.

5G – INTERNET OF THINGS AND  AI
AI- another word for computer, AI  is around quite a bit from 70's, AI today is buzz- word,  AI is computer and creating algorithms to run the PC, AI is a bubble and mainly about investment and stock market and positioning start -up companies for stock offering. Companies from Silicon valley – Google, FB , Amazon are just collecting money. Zuckerberg is an epidemy of “go get the money”

Dr Schoechle  BOOKS are getting actual solutions with wired options. Major IDEAS TO HELP us with 5G

REINVENTING WIRES- technology used copper and later optical fiber (in 2000). According to Dr Schoechle the bottle neck of the system is WIFI part, which is handy for things that move. For not moving better performance is by having wire, make sure that fibers go to everybody house and business Dr is calling for new movement.  For every town and city in the country to build own fiber, as they build own sewer, new water treatment sybtem…It is necessity of modern life to have fiber for everybody.
Benefits by doing that, by wiring the building level – provides symmetrical service, high performance access in the home. You can work from home, with fiber you can download stuff just as fast as you download it. Older conventional  systems DSL and cable don’t provide this kind of symmetry and mobile system don’t need such symmetry, it is built for downloading apps, movies, not for symmetrical service. Nice thing about fiber you can have a server in your house, run business out of it
Example thru energy -Energy management be able to control the flow of electricity in the local  community in real time and trade that power,  optimize performance of distributed system and microgrids. But they need high speed communication to work. Optical fiber would be ideal

SMART GRID – WIRED GRID  - what kind of utility meters you recommend?
Power grid in parallel with  fibro optic network is intelligent power gateway that controls the flow of energy within homes and balances the generation of recent storage of energy on the premises . And thru local distribution grid and fiber network  balance that flow within the community. The whole community can achieve high level of penetration  of solar energy by doing that.
Smart meter – originally for controlling the energy use on the premises, were hard wired to telephone network in 90th.  But energy companies discovered to make more money by making them wireless (by selling extra network) Meters become big money machine. Origin meter was part of the whole control system that is working entirely on the premises sending billing data on monthly basis to the utility company. Not now, utility suck out data on 15 minute interval basis, no reason for it, the data are collected for somebody else, for different purpose, doesn’t make any sense. Dr Schoechle is trying to go back to the original concept with  smart meters, which is part of a system that’s on premises control of energy- premises based control. Not like industry illusion idea- “giant computer in the sky which monitor everybody toaster  and somehow control flow of energy”

IS DIGITAL METER STILL REQUIRED to do home level of control OR can it be ANALOG METER?
People want analog meters, because they are not radiating microwaves., no microwave transmitter in the house. Modern equipment has meters built in, like solar inverter, measuring amount of power that’s being produced coming out from solar panels and amount of power going to your house. They can be digital and there is nothing wrong if you use info locally to control the flow of energy and  they don’t have microwave or radar transmitter. That is the issue -radiation . We don’t need that.
Smart meters were installed to surveil people and collect data 5G is data harvesting & surveillance technology, control in the name of convenience

HOW SMART UTILITY METERS AND 5G infrastructure are planned to WORK TOGETHER?
If utility industry needs money, they do it, otherwise data doesn’t need premises, in fact premises needs data. The idea using fiber network to control the flow of energy is one of the cutting edge areas now. Real time - local - trading of energy in short intervals  basis between homes and building in the distribution grid makes the grid very efficient without collecting data. Data are held on premises, there is no need to send data to electric company.

WISE GRID SOLUTION tell us about  level of effectiveness of solar energy production and energy storage?
Solar is already competitive with any kind of energy, issue around solar is storage. If this will be solved then you have  a perfect solution. Storage is extremely expensive, but performance is dramatically improving. They use the same kind of battery technology in electric vehicles and effort around the world is to improve that, solar and storage is competitive with natural gas and far better than coal.

In cloudy climate you just need more solar panels. Germany is the leader in the world with the most solar panels installed and they don’t have to many sunny days . Hydro technology can be added to it, they can work together with the same electric power grid. Smaller distributive technologies are going to be better than highly centralized ones. In Denver you have  300 sunny days in average, in Seattle less, so they need more solar. Germany has gotten reputation for being one of the most solarized countries in the world and they are not sunnier than Seattle

SOLAR AND WIND TECHNOLOGY are there technologies to make them cleaner from DIRTY ELECTRICITY?
New small inverters for home can be extremely clean. They don’t generate any dirty electricity, they can clean up the electricity. Some older equipment are pretty noisy. Dirty electricity is electrical noise which is created by cheap electronics. If you design electronics properly then it is very nice and clean .
The same can be said about LED lamps, forest combat lamps, if they are properly designed they are fine. But mostly companies didn’t care about it. Negative opinion also on big wind farms because they need building transmission system which create all kinds of radiation, noise and need a lot of money. We have opportunity to change  100 years old electric system- centralized capital intensive structure to new decentralized distributed consumer electronic mass market structure. Those products can be designed user friendly

CAN WE PRESERVE OUR RIGHTS from being taking over by “surveillance economy” THAT WAY?
Smaller is usually better, no corporate structure, capital  structure and  big corporations are so politically uncontrollable.
If we can favor localized distributed technologies then we will be much better to able to shape our environment in desirable way. When stuff is controlled by big corporations you don’t have any say over what they do what they design. Smaller market works better. Any market  which gets to "big“ becomes out of control and dominated by corporate interests

STORAGE AND ENERGY PRODUCTION are there specific advanced products for energy storage you would recommend? (Tesla power wall?)
Clean/dirty power, small home inverters, small equipment there is an idea to go to DC power, to create a market for more DC appliances, which is the cleanest kind of power.  Home appliances have DC motor built inside already, just they run on AC power system. If market would run on DC it would cut a lot of cost for appliances
Solar panel storage is on DC power system,
Discussion if use low voltage or high voltage technology. Dr Schoechle  prefers low voltage, under 48 V which has been standard around for many years, pioneered by T. Edison. Idea not going over 50 V in the power grid  developed a lot of battery technologies.

Power wall is for efficiency reasons and is running on higher voltage because  solar panel ( energy production) has  higher voltage system, it’s cheaper.  Problem is, it’s dangerous, not consumer friendly.
Under 50 V (48 V)  it is safe Snyder electric company, Magna use  low voltage DC systems, they don’t work with solar panels but convert high voltage into low voltage battery power and with that work in premises.
Lighting control low voltage DC, PC and  phone new standards –in his book “Reinventing wires”                  
For building wiring using internet, data can be  transmitted  around the building at the same speed as the fiber is coming in. Working on New version of USB that includes internet and will deliver  DC power over the same wire. You can plug your phone to the charger on your wall and you will get power and data out of the same plug – new version of USB.
The transition technology MOCA has adapter between wired router and TV cable system thru the house, allows internet to be transmitted in every room which has TV outlet.

5G AND WIRED SOLUTION: BATTLE BETWEEN  LOCAL GOVERNMENT VERSUS FCC over 300 legal battles already
What would you say to local government which has intention to do something but is not sure about legal battle?
You have to stand up to and have some courage to represent your constituents, people who live in the community, their right, health and safety. That’s your job. You have to change this, not just playing you have hands tight up, to take your power back. That might be not easy. It has to start at City Council level, County level,  in democracy it has to start there. It requires a lot of lobbying to change the State law. While ALEC laws were done we were sleeping… Now  we have to a lot of laws to undo
Ongoing battle in court NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) versus FCC, many municipalities joined that suit thru organizations like Colorado Communications and Utility Alliance Also laws in Congress. Corporations became “the Frankenstein invention of humanity,”  machine that’s out of control ! They were allowed to be out of control and now we try to bring things back to control.

LOCAL ACTION AND POLITICAL WILL
How important is  that people communicate and educate their elected officials on this issue?
Very important. Officials are usually swamped with issues, they have hundreds of pages to read, they don’t have any staff for it and they have to make decisions. So they are short of time and  anything you can do  and help them to speed on things  is important. Everything you can do their appreciate.  “squeaky wheel gets the grease “

What you think on general strategy - fighting FCC and in the same time focusing on "roadmap for wired solutions”
Getting to know your local officials,  have a cup of coffee. Don’t assume that they are in the pocket of the opposition, just be up front with them and tell him how you feel. Make sure your friends do the same thing. Don’t assume that there is a conspiracy, don’t assume that everything is wired against you , just assume they need enough time to get the message. Keep in mind they are very busy.
Building solutions : Like local government ensure drinking water and sewer for everybody, internet connection should be held the same way -for everybody.                                        
Unfortunately ALEC law went around and got 20 states to pass law that prohibited municipalities from building fiber network and communication system in preference to corporations. There is some chance to opt out of it. (like Colorado)                                                                                                               
Corporations try to cement their monopolies and 20 states have that problem. The FCC actually overruled that -on correct side that time. It continued to court battle, so that has to be undone and communities that own electric power system which includes optical fiber  can be the national example. Like Chattanooga Tennessee has municipal power system that put in optical fiber network, another Longmont Colorado half of inhabitants have electricity and optical fiber. They can move that system  to the advanced  distributed power grid, if they want to have solar.
In terms of cities in Colorado last year they were adapting 100 % renewable energy goal for their communities. And landed the ground work with integrated fiber solutions

Have you identify funding plan that local government financially can do it?
Chattanooga had large federal grant to help them, also Longmont had some funding to initiate that. Some electric companies in Colorado and New Mexico also got some money to upgrade their electrical power with fiber system. But municipalities have a power of taxation and they have bonding capacity and can  make decision for this investment ( big one ) But pay back has been shown in Chattanooga. Return was billion dollars in few years in terms of local business, revitalized economy. Having that kind of infrastructure can revitalized local economy especially  in era when work patterns are changing , there is more responsibility on individuals  working from home.  Communication became more important than ever was before. Businesses work better if they have good communication.
That kind of investment by communities in doing bonding to support fiber construction would be paid off. 
Local government has power to make it more difficult to the wireless providers with recertification and by passing rules for minimum distances between cell sides and residential areas. Local government can and should do that to represent interest of the citizen and  there is also environmental responsibility

CLOSING THOUGHTS
Better communication between cities and towns would be effective, experience of cities learning to work together, collaborate and trade information, knowledge and solutions. Cities share a lot of common problems, sharing experiences and sometimes legal cause make it easier to do and actually give them courage. To see  they are not just by themselves having issues, defending  themselves alone, but that they have colleagues next door they can work with. That’s the way to go.
They are also local organizations  learning  what ” the landscape” is and making sure that public officials are aware of it.

"LOOK FOR THE OPPORTUNITY  NOT FOR CATASTROPHY “