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Communications EU

Study Sounds Alarm on 5G Fake News, EU Needs To Promote Benefits (reuters.com) 49

European Union leaders need to tackle urgently disinformation on 5G technology, which is central to the bloc's economic recovery from COVID-19 and its plans to catch up with the United States and China, a study by telecoms lobby group ETNO showed. From a report: Conspiracy theories that tie the wireless technology to the spread of the novel coronavirus have seen mobile phone masts torched in 10 European countries and assaults on scores of maintenance workers in recent months. For the 27-country EU, however, 5G which promises to enable everything from self-driving cars to remote surgery and more automated manufacturing is seen as the linchpin of its economic recovery and technology autonomy. A study by consultant IPSOS, commissioned by telecoms lobbying groups ETNO and seen by Reuters, underlines the battle ahead for EU governments. "While the majority of Europeans is positive towards 5G, 10% of those interviewed hold a negative view on this technology. IPSOS also tested some 5G myths and found that while a small minority believes in them, a substantial amount of Europeans isn't sure that they are false either," ETNO said.
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Study Sounds Alarm on 5G Fake News, EU Needs To Promote Benefits

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  • Normal (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Thursday October 01, 2020 @03:50PM (#60562250)

    "IPSOS also tested some 5G myths and found that while a small minority believes in them, a substantial amount of Europeans isn't sure that they are false either," ETNO said."

    50% of the Europeans also have an IQ of under 100, even if they have universal healthcare and 30 days vacation.

    • We can work with that. Just tell people that the individual member countries and the European Union consulted their very strict safety requirements, fully evaluated the foreign-introduced poor-safety-record 6G technology and IPSOS facto properly rejected them, and then decided to go with the completely safe 5G standard instead, which all regulatory bodies have identified that there ETNO problem with :-)

    • by 1s44c ( 552956 )

      50% of the Europeans also have an IQ of under 100, even if they have universal healthcare and 30 days vacation.

      It was originally the case that an IQ of 100 was average but the scale has drifted. It's all rather complicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      I know you really mean that 50% of people have below average intelligence.

    • Re:Normal (Score:5, Informative)

      by thomst ( 1640045 ) on Thursday October 01, 2020 @05:04PM (#60562568) Homepage

      nospam007 blathered:

      50% of the Europeans also have an IQ of under 100, even if they have universal healthcare and 30 days vacation.

      No they don't, you innumerate imbecile.

      100 is nominally the median IQ. That supposedly means that half the human race has a higher score, and half has a lower one. The facts are, however, that:

      A. IQ scores are not absolute [wikipedia.org]. Take a different variation on the Stanford-Binet test, and your score may well vary 5 points or more in either direction. Take the same test on a different day, and your score will vary. They're soft numbers - downright squishy, in fact - and
      B. There is a significant fraction of the human race that shares the median score [umass.edu]. It's not a useful divider, because as much as 28% of the population scores within 5 points of the median.

      So, Carlin's Law [wordpress.com] notwithstanding, your thoughtless over-broad generalization about European IQ's - and IQ scores overall - is factually incorrect.

      And, yes, I recognize you were trying to be funny.

      Try harder, next time ...

      • by crolix ( 833807 )
        IQ tests measure how knowledgeable you are, but 'knowledgeable' doesn't necessarily equal 'smart'. It's true that a knowledgeable person can appear smart because they can solve problems or answer questions by simply knowing the correct answers (sometimes without understanding why it's correct). But a real smart person is the one who can figure out a solution to a new problem without prior knowledge of the correct solution.
  • by ZombieDonut ( 1291338 ) on Thursday October 01, 2020 @04:01PM (#60562308)
    So they're saying Europe's cure to economic recovery lies in 5G adoption?
    That literally sounds like another 5G myth.
    Who wrote this... "a study by telecoms lobby group ETNO"... uh huh, of course.
    • I think that's Apple's recipe for economic recovery.
    • So they're saying Europe's cure to economic recovery lies in 5G adoption?
      That literally sounds like another 5G myth.

      Based on what. By 2017 the 4G rollout generated $3.7trillion in GDP in value. 5G is expected to beat that significantly due to its adoption absorbing not only all potential 4G customers, but expanding into IoT, land-mobile radio, and micro-base services.

      I bet you also think that Trump is blocking Huawei because they are a security threat rather than the fact that they are direct competition to what is expected to be a multi trillion dollar business incredibly lucrative to those who dominate the infrastructu

  • The telcos might want to explain what the benefits of 5G are to their US subscribers as well, besides being able to reach your ridiculously low "unlimited" data cap even faster.

    • If the testing I've read is accurate, 5G is a miserable failure. Its range is paltry, and it's speed is less than what we're getting now. It seems like the only ones who benefit from 5G span from the manufacturers to the retailers. After that, it's all regression.

      • by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Range is dependent ( given same conditions regarding to obstrucrions etc) antenna, transmit power and frequency, if you keep them the same you will gave the same coverage from the same tower on 4G and 5G, if you are refering yo 5G on the 6Ghz band then yes ofc it will have kess coverage than 4G( on a much lower frequencies. Sorry for being a bit pedantic here, but the biggest myths about 5G us that it will have wirse coverage ( once the rollout is complete)
        • But when they use similar frequency of 4G, are there still speed improvement/latency improvement? Mixing capacity of mmWave/microwave 5G with range of traditional cellphone frequency is fake advertisement.
    • by slazzy ( 864185 )
      You'll now reach your data cap in into 3/4 of a second! The future is here!
  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday October 01, 2020 @04:05PM (#60562320) Journal
    Any attempt to promote 5G by the govt will be seen as proof it has nefarious and ulterior motives by those who believe fake news.

    So it is probably not a wise idea. Even if it is a wise idea, why should govt promote one tech over another, pick winners and choosers instead of calling strikes and outs?

    If the morons dont realize the benefit of 5G, so be it, no 5G for them. If people who benefit by 5G cry hoarse, remember you did not cry when the fake news trusting crowd did damage to climate science, or gun control, pollution or EPA. So you suffer now.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by P1ON33R ( 164061 )

        > it's the vendor of equipment that might be used that would compromise national security

        You mean, China *might* do this, as opposed to (say) the US which will most definately make use of backdoors and weakened encryption schemes for spying, and which has a massive track record to prove that this has already happened (Echelon + Boeing, Cisco backdoors, ..).

    • Any attempt to promote 5G by the govt will be seen as proof it has nefarious and ulterior motives by those who believe fake news.

      I came to post exactly the same thought, this is 100% what will happen if the government there promotes 5G trying to dispel myths - egged on by many trolls.

      In fact I would say the problem for the modern age, is trying to recognize when a substantial number of people truly believe some kind of crazy theory, vs. it maybe being a troll army trying to promote a crazy idea...

      The towers

    • If the morons dont realize the benefit of 5G, so be it, no 5G for them.

      The problem is 5G's benefits isn't for the morons. It's largely for companies and governments. The average person in the street will only see a little direct personal benefit.

  • 5G is :

    _central to the bloc's economic recovery from COVID-19
    Uh ?

    _promises to enable everything from self-driving
    What has self-driving to do with cell-phones ?

    _ remote surgery
    Uh ? Like this doesn't exist already or would use radio-waves subject to interference and accidental jamming.

    _more automated manufacturing
    Uh ? Like people would want that, and same as above.

    _ linchpin of its economic recovery
    Uh ?

    _technology autonomy
    Uh ? like 5G has been designed and manufactured by European firms ?

    I'm not entirely sure

    • Re:Whose Myths ??? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Thursday October 01, 2020 @04:57PM (#60562548) Homepage
      Actually, a couple of points are (at least potentially) valid:

      Self-driving. This is the IoT aspect of 5G; it supposedly allows a LOT more simultaneous connections, so this would in theory facilitate a lot more data exhange between vehicles on the road, e.g. simple location data, or even messages along the lines of "I'm here and am going to switch from lane 3 to 2 in five seconds" to avoid two vehicles trying to pull into the same lane from opposite directions at the same time.

      Automated manufacturing. Management absolute wants this since they see it as less workers = lower costs. Quite how 5G is an enabler for it vs. other proven process control network technologies though, I have no idea.

      Technology autonomy. Actually, yes, 5G *has* been designed and manufactured to a significant extent by European firms - do the names "Ericsson" and "Nokia" ring any bells? Both are major players in the 5G infrastructure hardware sector.

      I'm with you on the rest though: Grade A BS by the lobby group.
      • I spoke to a self-driving researcher from my local university a while back about the impact of 5G on the sector. He said that because 4G/5G coverage could not be guaranteed the entire ride, self driving cars would entirely avoid relying on it for inter-car communication. I'm trying to see through the haze of marketing and hype around 5G. And so far, for the customer, the only real theoretical advantage I see is the increase in speed. For the carriers, there is a lot more control built in around application
  • As they cover the truth about how weak as hell is the signal, and how the mobile operators will just use "5Gsomething" to fool people into thinking they're using the thing while its just 4.5 or 4 or 3

  • Benefits? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday October 01, 2020 @04:19PM (#60562392) Homepage

    This is a report by the companies that are apparently failing to sell their product, despite having massive marketing departments. If they can't sell their product, why should the government do it for them?

    Anyway, what benefits? From what I've understood, 5G is very short-range and penetrates basically nothing. To actually get the advertised speeds, you need to be outside and damned close to the antenna. There's no believable way that entire cities will be covered by 5G antennas - too many would be needed. Maybe 5G would be useful in large public spaces like sports stadiums, OTOH people in such places are supposed to be there for some reason other than watching videos on their phones.

    It looks increasingly like 5g is a solution in search of a problem. While it may be used in a few niche situations, 3G and 4G are likely to remain dominant.

    • It looks increasingly like 5g is a solution in search of a problem.

      It has found a problem - people who NEED something NEW each year when they replace their old phone.

      Next year it will be a phone that uses 5G and doesn't need to be recharged twice a day.

    • It looks increasingly like 5g is a solution in search of a problem. While it may be used in a few niche situations, 3G and 4G are likely to remain dominant.

      The fact you compare 5G to 4G/3G would indicate you think that the "problem" is with cellular services. In that way you're right, 5G would be looking for a non-existent problem there. But it's not in general. 5G isn't about you or me. It's not about faster Netflix videos, or quicker Facebook uploads.

      5G is built for first and foremost for industry. The overwhelming majority of the changes focus on subscriber count, subscriber density, reduced bandwidth cost, controlling frequencies and ranges from base stati

      • 5G is built for first and foremost for industry.

        If this is in fact true you should be sounding the alarm informing major CARRIERS they are foolishly misallocating hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising 5G to the PUBLIC when they should be targeting industry.

        The overwhelming majority of the changes focus on subscriber count, subscriber density, reduced bandwidth cost, controlling frequencies and ranges from base stations, reduced latency, ability to broadcast, point-to-point capabilities, increased reliability at speed and better dynamic handover between bases, dramatically reducing call-setup-time, etc.

        The only useful difference between 4G and 5G is utilization of higher frequency bands and increased density of towers. The rest is of limited real world import.

        The most you or any other 4G client can hope to get out of 5G is that you may be able to actually use your phone at a football game.

        Due to frequency selection and tower distribution not G counts. Without these advantages 5G would net similar outcomes to present da

        • Not at all. They are heavily targeting industry, always have from the beginning. There's also very good reasons for carriers to target public. New shiny technology that offers few benefits sells new shiny shit to people with money all the while marketing exists to make people believe they need something they don't.

          There's nothing foolish about the carriers marketing 5G to the public. It also doesn't change the fact that nearly all the benefits of 5G don't target consumers.

          The only useful difference between 4G and 5G is utilization of higher frequency bands and increased density of towers. The rest is of limited real world import.

          It must be nice to be so ignorant.

          • No due to design of the air interface and BR efficiency which has zero to do with frequency or tower distribution.

            What are you talking about? What BR efficiency? How do you magically get significantly more bit efficiency out of the same frequency using the same modulation? There are already diminishing returns on constellation size.

            I fail to understand what notable amount of bandwidth or concurrency can possibly be squeezed out of typical 4G frequency bands that is in any way comparable to capabilities arising from utilization of higher resolution steering, channel width, data rate associated with frequency bands sev

  • If there were a public phone booth every 100 meters.

  • "Study by poultry industry shows that chicken is good for you"

    Why is what is essentially an industry marketing press release Slashdot news?

  • I blame this lack of critical thinking skills on the public school system
  • Given the fact 5G is mostly a marketing scam why should anyone care about BS being promulgated against it? If anything it should be encouraged.

    We've all been hearing how a technology with the very same modulation as existing 4G is going to revolutionize the world for quite some time now... I suspect most people stopped caring long ago if they ever did at all.

    The reality has always been 5G is nothing more than an incremental improvement with limited applicability due to decreased range and interference prob

    • Perhaps you missed this:

      Conspiracy theories that tie the wireless technology to the spread of the novel coronavirus have seen mobile phone masts torched in 10 European countries and assaults on scores of maintenance workers in recent months.

      Actual harm to actual humans has resulted from this disinfo.

      • Perhaps you missed this:

        Conspiracy theories that tie the wireless technology to the spread of the novel coronavirus have seen mobile phone masts torched in 10 European countries and assaults on scores of maintenance workers in recent months.

        Actual harm to actual humans has resulted from this disinfo.

        TFA is about an industry interest group explicitly asking a government to do more to help them spread positive 5G disinformation.

        As the proverb goes live by the sword die by the sword. You can't concurrently be knowingly responsible for spreading disinformation and then all of the sudden expect people to care about other disinformation being spread by others not in your favor. From TFA itself:

        "In the case of the 5G conspiracy, this haze of ignorance has been aided and abetted by the mobile operators themselves. The 5G hype train has been rolling for years, with fake 5G logos in phones and fanfares for networks that only work on a few streets. Ads shout about 5G's "revolutionary potential" and promise it will bring a self-driving car to every home and a robot surgeon to every hospital. There's a lot of talk about what 5G will supposedly do, but very little about what it actually is, which allows people to ignore the simple, even tedious truth: it's the internet, but faster. And more to the point: it involves a lot of equipment that breaks and has to be fixed by actual people.

        This knowledge gap, deliberately obfuscated by slick marketing, gives space for conspiracy. If the root appeal of a conspiracy theory is that it simplifies the world's messy truths, what could be a better way to explain the pandemic, a story of endless complexity that involves viruses, globalization, and human biology?"

        While it goes without saying instances of illegal violence and incitement to it are indefensible and should be pro

  • That's silly. It spreads covid 5. 19G spreads covid 19. Duh.

    What craziness are they going to come up with next? That staring at cell phone screens all day causes autism? Preposterous!
  • Seriously, this is the very core of nations. One of the mistakes that America has been doing is using Chinese manufacturing of goods leaving us wondering how much spying is going on. The west needs to have our own communication separate from China's influence. Ideally, Europe, America, Japan and S. Korea will all build same stuff and compete. BUT, it needs to be secured even amongst each other. It is one thing for America to teach Germany, Japan, S. Korea, etc how to spy on comm links, but another for us to
  • Why wouldn't the common folk be? https://blogs.scientificameric... [scientificamerican.com] Economics be damned if there is even a slight chance of health consequences. More and longer studies are needed.

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