REVIEWING 5G TECHNOLOGY AMIDST FEAR OF CAUSING CORONA VIRUS

by - 13:09:00


The COVID-19 virus yesterday spark an international debate on the 5G cellular network technology as many now believed it is the cause of the ravaging Corona Virus. In the United Kingdom, a few masts were destroyed and pastors, political leaders and celebrities in Africa calling on their Government not to license the deployment of the technology.  

The President of The United States has sometimes referred to the virus as the Chinese Virus and a lot of people believed the Corona Virus as developed in China as a bioweapon. Over the weekend, the story changed with a new group of people claiming that the virus was released via satellite into the town of Wuhan in China. They claimed that 5G technology was used in its deployment and hence 5G tower must be the cause of the widespread virus.

5G wireless data transmission is still a relatively emerging technology and only available in some highly developed countries across the world. It is a highly advanced upgrade to the currently available 4G technology with speed getting as high as 20Gbps. You will be able to download a 1GB file in 3 seconds!!!

Some observers believed that the 2019 sanctions of some Chinese companies by the US government and the moves by the Chinese against America based interests are borne out of who controls the 5G technology.

Beyond speed, 5G as a technology will revolutionize the way we will do so many things today. It will greatly improve the deployment of IoT, Self-Driving Machines, Remote Access, Hologram and others. Research on the 5G Economy revealed that 5G technology can alone generate up to $3.5T in revenue by the year 2035.

A report by Foster, 2019 says that “5G systems will operate in several frequency bands, including one that is slightly below (and will eventually extend into) the millimeter-wave part of the RF spectrum that extends from 30 to 300 GHz. While millimeter waves have not heretofore been used for cellular communications, they have been used for many other applications, including airport security scanners, anti-collision radar for automobiles, and to link present-day cellular base stations.

Available reports commissioned by different organizations including the United States Airforce also shows that MMwave is safe for humans. But many feared that 5G being clusters of radios that will be located close to humans (on street light and other utility poles), it might increase human exposure to harmful radiations.

Nigeria is yet to license the use of 5G technology within the country but it might not be so for long as available reports suggested that the Ministry of Communication and the necessary agencies are already working on it.

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