While working at home, I have taken to having a quick five-minute walk down to
that corner and back after lunch. I realized a few days ago that the new pole
was a cell tower. I figured that that new County zoning rule, or whatever it
was, allowing cell transmitters on phone poles, had passed. I just thought, as
usual, the development interests get their way. I did not realize that this
issue is still in play. I did see a guy working there from some telecom company
- not Verizon, rather, apparently, an installation contractor, - but I don't
recall the name that was on the truck. But I'll watch for it.
Unhappily, I think this is probably a losing battle. Just to show how absurd it
all is, the FCC has taken spectrum from NOAA, over the latter's strong
protests, to give to the telecom companies. This is spectrum reserved for
weather satellite communications. This did not start with Trump. It started
during the Obama Administration. [Political comment deleted.]
Weather satellite instruments that sense in the microwave have been plagued for
a long time with "RFI": radio frequency interference. Techniques are in
constant development to screen it out and remove it, but in the long run it's a
losing battle. So it is on both the comms side and the sensing side that
weather satellites are under threat from Facetime, or Netflix, or whatever it
is that people want to do with all that mobile bandwith.
Even with the best mathematical techniques, there is only so much information
you can transmit through a unit of radio frequency spectrum, and there is only
so much spectrum. So important things have to give way to crap, because the
crap is more important.
The more bits we can create and transmit, the less important the average value
is of one bit. Think of it as a case of cost decreasing faster than marginal
utility. So consumption goes way up.
But maybe we can stall them, or at least make them obey the law.
Richard Cember412 Boston Ave.
