POLE POSITION?
Lum says Sacramento has a long way to go. He thinks Veri-
zon’s 5G Home rollouts in the other test cities are in similar
positions — except for Los Angeles, which is worse in terms
of area coverage. Lum took a similar trip there to analyze
the deployment and found sites in only two of 15 city coun-
cil districts.
But until project planners figure out how to address the
pole problem, connectivity will remain limited, Lum says.
During his trips to the capital, he plugged in various res-
idential addresses on the Verizon site to see how far the
signal was able to reach. The results weren’t promising.
“It’s going to be difficult doing 5G at these frequency
bands,” he says. “How far can the signal go with all the
trees? Distances are much shorter than I would’ve imag-
ined. That complicates the deployment.”
Certain neighborhoods have decorative “acorn” lights
that aren’t suitable for small cells. But with such limit-
ed range, Lum wonders how the radios mounted on poles
around the perimeter will deliver 5G service throughout
the neighborhoods.
“Can you swap out an acorn light for a 35-foot LED
pole?” Lum wonders. “If you can’t swap those out, you’ll
never get city wide coverage. Or, if you do, will someone in
the neighborhood be upset because you wrecked the scen-
ery?”
This is an issue about coverage now, let alone years down
the road when the city expects to have the game-changing
innovations. “If you’re talking about autonomous cars,”
Lum says, “you’re going to need every corner where you
have street lights filled with radios beaming all over the
place.”
Any agreement involving many tens of millions of dol-
lars of new spending will be complex, says Gordon Feller,
cofounder of Meeting of the Minds, a nonprofit focused on
innovations in smart and sustainable cities. He says the
signed agreement was always available and the city has
been transparent, but the delay leaves many small busi-
nesses not sure if and how 5G will help them.
“The process of getting these small cell sites up and
running has been frustrating only because the expecta-
tion was very high,” Feller says. “With every new thing, the
expectation that it will go fast has to meet reality.” n
Russell Nichols is a freelance writer who focuses on technolo-
gy, culture and mental health. His work has appeared in The
Wall Street Journal, T he Boston Globe, Governing Magazine
and Government Technology. On Twitter @russellnichols.
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