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With construction of the wireless component of the National Broadband Network (NBN) getting underway in some regional areas of Australia, the inevitable squabbles over where transmission towers should and should not be built are in full swing.
The process calls for calm, consultation with councils and residents, and transparent information flow. Rural councils need to be involved with making sure people understand what is happening, and why it is happening.
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However, it seems the Moorabool Council, west of Melbourne, has developed something of a double standard towards the construction of the towers.
| Wireless Internet Towers Opposed |
“GORDON and Yendon residents are fighting plans to construct three large wireless internet towers, saying they will threaten people’s safety and ruin the rural aesthetics.”
“A Moorabool Council spokesman said the council had advised NBN Co to hold further consultation sessions.”
| Blackwood Telstra Tower: Moorabool Mayor Says Honour Promise |
“”Telstra have been promising for a long time to put up a mobile phone tower in Blackwood,” Cr Griffin said. “It is a very serious situation because there is no (mobile phone) coverage there. So some people are very difficult to communicate with in case of fire.”"
“Cr Griffin said he urged the telecommunications company to not let financial considerations stand in the way.”
“”I call on Telstra to get on with it,” he said.”
It really seems like Moorabool Council are keen about, and are promoting the NBN in their municipality, but are demanding Telstra hurry up and build the mobile phone tower in Blackwood, yet they tell NBN Co to go away and do more work for Yendon, Lal Lal and Gordon.
Two services they want that require the erection of transmission towers, yet two different responses.
Will the tower in Blackwood not ruin “rural aesthetics”, while the towers in Yendon, Lal Lal and Gordon are doing that exact same “ruining”?
I’m all for improving mobile phone coverage, and improving bushfire safety. Similarly, I’m all for getting the placement of NBN wireless towers right.
But there really should not be a “picking and choosing” of council positions to suit what are really only slightly different technical and aesthetic arguments.
The lifts in the building I work in are currently under refurbishment. Take a look at the sign that was in the lift lobby on my floor on Friday afternoon:
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The button on the other side? Really? Which button was I going to use on THIS side?
With areas around the Ballarat region to become some of the first areas in Australia to receive NBN Co’s wireless solution, there has been a lot of hullabaloo about the erection of the towers to actually deliver the service.
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I respect that people have the right to choose whether they have the towers on their land or not, but to go with the “they will give us cancer” angle is just incorrect.
Numerous studies – including those done by the World Health Organisation – have shown no conclusive evidence that wireless towers cause cancer.
| Cellular Phone Towers |
“Some people have expressed concern that living, working, or going to school near a cell phone tower might increase the risk of cancer or other health problems. At this time, there is very little evidence to support this idea. In theory, there are some important points that would argue against cellular phone towers being able to cause cancer.”
“First, the energy level of radiofrequency (RF) waves is relatively low, especially when compared with the types of radiation that are known to increase cancer risk, such as gamma rays, x-rays, and ultraviolet (UV) light. The energy of RF waves given off by cell phone towers is not enough to break chemical bonds in DNA molecules, which is how these stronger forms of radiation may lead to cancer.”
“A second issue has to do with wavelength. RF waves have long wavelengths, which can only be concentrated to about an inch or two in size. This makes it unlikely that the energy from RF waves could be concentrated enough to affect individual cells in the body.”
“Third, even if RF waves were somehow able to affect cells in the body at higher doses, the level of RF waves present at ground level is very low — well below the recommended limits. Levels of energy from RF waves near cell phone towers are not significantly different than the background levels of RF radiation in urban areas from other sources, such as radio and television broadcast stations.”
“For these reasons, most scientists agree that cell phone antennas or towers are unlikely to cause cancer.”
In fact, you are more likely to get cancer from UV sunlight. Apparently.
People want these services, but they don’t want the infrastructure that delivers them.
And there’s no evidence it is affecting them anyway.
I’ll start off by saying I am by no means an RF engineer, so I may be completely wrong about what I am about to write about. I am however, quite confident in my empirical observations over time.
I got into an interesting conversation about RF interference generated by HFC systems – (often touted as an “alternative” to the NBN) – with Gary Stark and Dan Warne on Twitter on Friday afternoon.
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Gary raised the issue of signal leakage from HFC systems that interfere with terrestrial RF broadcasts – (such as radio, television, emergency communications, etc) – and the discussion led to the thoughts that any proliferation in the use of HFC for internet delivery – (as espoused by some) – would increase the problem, and possibly create others.
Gary highlighted the Bondi area of Sydney as being particularly RF congested. There are many competing frequencies in the area, that interference is a common occurrence.
This reminded me of my own observations around Geelong.
For example, have a listen to the interference caused to a terrestrial radio transmission as I drive past the TransACT headquarters – this was recorded on Friday afternoon:
Now – (and note I said earlier, I am no RF engineer, so I could quite easily have this ass-about, but stick with me for a bit) – that doesn’t seem good, does it?
Some people I am sure will say, “oh look, there is a radio tower and a mobile phone tower there too”. Well, those towers were in place before the HFC network was, and this interference did not occur in this location before the cable network went up.
I can also vouch for the fact that having worked in Geelong in a role that would see me drive all over the city at all times, similar interference occurs all over Geelong, particularly near splitters and boosters in this particular HFC network.
The Melbourne/Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, and West Gippsland broadcast areas – (for both radio and television) – have a considerable history of interfering with each other, and over the years there has been much juggling of spectrum.
So congested is the spectrum, that the advent of digital television created many headaches.
Metropolitan digital services for the Seven Network are broadcast on VHF channel 6, the same frequencies that were used for Nine Network-affiliated WIN Television from Ballarat since 1963 – which was moved to UHF channel 36.
Metropolitan Nine Network digital services are transmitted on VHF channel 8, conflicting with the Network Ten-affiliated signals originated by Southern Cross Ten from Bendigo and Gippsland. Similarly, metro Network Ten digital signals are broadcast on VHF channel 11, previously used by the ABC in Ballarat.
Melbourne’s 3AW and its sister station Magic1278 actually swapped frequencies some years ago to alleviate as much interference as possible from its 3AW signal – which moved from 1278AM to 693AM.
The ABC are trying to launch a local radio station in Geelong, but haven’t been able to find a suitable frequency so far, with the process now about five years old. A new ABC NewsRadio frequency in Ballarat and a community FM licence in Melbourne’s outer east regularly interfere with each other.
The ultimate point to make is that the RF spectrum is incredibly congested, in many areas. Not just Melbourne or Geelong or Bondi. It is a real headache for authorities in allocating frequencies for new services all over the country.
Locking the existing HFC networks into use for any “NBN-like” network does nothing to solve this problem. Putting more people on them may actually increase the problem.
HFC is also an analogue technology, not digital. It will also likely actually cost us more than switching to a primarily fibre-based network from the beginning.
HFC is still not the answer.
We’ve all seen the signs on bridges and other low structures under which a roadway passes.
“Low Clearance”, “Maximum Height”, etc, etc.
In the midst of completing a work-related errand this morning in West Melbourne, I saw this sign over the garage entrance of a block of apartments.
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Clearly someone with a sense of humour and who remembers the 1980′s put this sign up in honour of Matt Frewer's semi-virtual reality character, Max Headroom.
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Well played.
Loving the photo cropping fail currently currently on display on the Geelong Advertiser website:
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The caption reads: “Harry Taylor at Geelong training yesterday.”
Harry must be a dentist now, because we can’t show you his face.
Melbourne’s suburban train operator Metro Trains Melbourne (MTM) has copped a lot of flack in recent days over its decision to drop sending service updates on Twitter for anything other than “major delays” – which they are defining as “20 or more minutes”.
They are telling customers to “regularly check their website” for details of other less significant delays.
Just to rub it in, they have just tweeted this:
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Frankly, it seems to me that nobody at MTM has travelled on a peak hour train in Melbourne of late, or if they have, they are not paying attention to what people do during their commute.
Ask yourself how many people are staring into their Twitter feeds, updating themselves on news, sport, weather, their friends, and up until recently, how long they can be expected to be jammed inside the overcrowded train they are on.
Getting timely updates, delivered straight to the device you are already staring at, was actually useful.
But MTM want us to “periodically” check their website just in case there is a problem – (reasonably likely anyway) – because they don’t want to send out tweets, unless it’s a major delay?
What is a major delay anyway?
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A five minute delay to one service can cause someone to miss a connecting train somewhere else, creating a much longer delay for the customer. If they miss an evening connection to a V/Line train, that may cost their customer a delay of an hour or more.
Such an instance really late at night might make the next available train equate to the next morning.
This is customer service is it, Metro?
“No, no, wait – we have a website you can get information from, it’s really useful!”
Genuine 1995 technology. Welcome to the past!
People want information about their service delivered to them when it matters – they don’t want to have to go find the information in case it exists.
Take a look at the Yarra Trams Twitter feed Metro – that’s how it SHOULD be done.
They used to do nothing, and you guys did an okay job. They’ve started doing it far better than you ever did, and now you don’t do it at all.
Wake up and smell the future, Metro.
We’re in it – how about you?
It really irks me that the two leading current affairs programs in Australia – Nine’s A Current Affair (ACA), and Seven’s Today Tonight (TT) – never seem to actually show any actual current affairs stories.
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They generally show what often don’t seem like much more than paid advertorials.
Incidentally, these two programs finished fifth and sixth in the overall ratings for yesterday – so there are plenty of people watching their rubbish “journalism”.
Lets for instance take as an example, ACA’s fourth run of basically the exact same story:
| How Many Times Can ACA Talk About Salt Therapy? |
Same salt therapy business, same interview subjects. Over and over again – and not really a bit of hard nosed journalism in sight, right?
ACA and TT often show almost identical stories, on the same nights, as ABC's excellent Media Watch has demonstrated.
Though still excellent, even the ABCs “7:30” has gone downhill a little since the departure of Kerry O'Brien.
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The Ten Network came along in 2011 with veteran current affairs man George Negus, with a bunch of talented journalists, and we actually got a decent current affairs program on network television for a while.
Until it was cancelled, because not enough people were watching.
Because people couldn’t stop watching the drivel on Seven and Nine. They keep lapping it up.
I remember when Jana Wendt, Ray Martin, Mike Willesee and Mike Munro variously hosted ACA, and it was real journalism.
But that was long ago.
Maybe if people were actually told about the world around them, they wouldn’t be so ignorant to it. It’s not the viewers fault – they’ve just been hoodwinked into believing that ACA and TT have some journalistic merit.
It’s trash television.
I hope “7:30″ doesn’t disappear, because then we’ll have almost nothing left.
