Yesterday marked the culmination of eight fairly intense weeks as we submitted our bid to the Rural Connected Communities competition.
Here’s a summary of the proposal that our consortium of local, national and multi-national partners, which we have called 5G RuralDorset, has put forward to Government.
Summary
We will address the cost and design challenges of using common wireless infrastructure at national scale to deliver services to rural communities. This will be evaluated by three service providers and across four different test-beds that respond to the needs of those living, working and visiting rural and coastal regions of Dorset and beyond.
Rural 5G Testbed – rural communities are poorly serviced by wireless connectivity. We will deploy a wide-area 5G wireless testbed allowing businesses and academia to prove the sustainable commercial case for improved 5G connectivity in rural locations. We will place new wireless technology on existing masts and fibre owned and operated by internet service provider Wessex Internet allowing rapid deployment on a significant scale. The resulting connectivity will support uses in agriculture and provide access to digital services tackling rural issues including isolation and social care needs. This will show that existing and new infrastructure can be combined to deliver next generation connectivity more affordably.
Connected Coast – the UK’s coastal regions generate significant economic wealth and support a range of leisure activities that boost health and well-being. But the coast can be dangerous. There are serious challenges communicating in such regions, with the first responder community and organisations including the RNLI, Maritime and Coastguard Agency and General Lighthouse Authority having very limited access to digital communications services. We will deploy a 5G services test-bed in the Lulworth Cove area and a further maritime safety test-bed on infrastructure along the coast. We will trial digital applications that engage with the public and improve the responsiveness of emergency services to incidents. We will evaluate the upgrade of existing infrastructure around the coast and develop the social and economic case for deployment, considering additional use cases from tourism and aquaculture to education and healthcare.
5G Innovation Testbed – we will build an advanced connectivity testbed at the heart of Dorset Innovation Park, a Local Enterprise Zone and advanced-engineering centre which already supports large and small companies that develop innovative connected products and services. This testbed will be connected to other sites in the UK and focus on wide-area connectivity solutions for rural and coastal regions. It will support businesses operating in the county and across the supply chain to test and develop products before deployment in a collaborative and secure way in this strategically important location.
Thank you to all the local and national organisations which provided letters of support for our bid. We should know whether we have been successful by Christmas.
5G: The potential in rural Dorset
Public Health Dorset statement on possible health concerns
If you are interested in staying up to date with our bid to Government and the latest digital news from Dorset then follow us on twitter or sign up for our e-newsletters.
5g has no biological testing to back it up. These frequencies are lethal. These masts WILL cause you harm. The WHO have no test on 5g backing up their lies.
Public Health England (PHE) has recently updated its advice in respect of 5G and states: “It is possible that there may be a small increase in overall exposure to radio waves when 5G is added to an existing network or in a new area. However, the overall exposure is expected to remain low relative to guidelines and, as such, there should be no consequences for public health.”
The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) is formally recognised by the World Health Organisation and provides scientific advice and guidance on the health and environmental effects of non-ionizing radiation (NIR) to protect people and the environment from detrimental NIR exposure.
In daily life, common sources of NIR include the sun, household electrical appliances, mobile phones, Wi-Fi and microwave ovens.
A Government statement issued in November 2019 said: In compliance with PHE advice, mobile network operators have committed to follow the ICNIRP guidelines on human exposure to electromagnetic fields, based upon the consensus view of a large amount of research carried out over many years. This includes the frequencies used by 5G and all other mobile/wireless technologies. Over the last two decades there have been over 100 expert reports on EMF and health published internationally with well over 3,000 studies informing these reviews and the existing scientific exposure guidelines.
“Ofcom will carry out audits of mobile base stations on an ongoing basis to ensure that ICNIRP guidelines are not exceeded and publish the results of these audits on its website.”