5G is still coming to Harbor Springs, but Verizon says there's nothing to worry about
HARBOR SPRINGS — The Harbor Springs Public Schools Board of Education met Monday night, again discussing the cell towers on top of the high school.
Verizon Senior Engineering Consultant David Haslinger spoke to the community to discuss 5G technology and whether or not people need to be concerned about the radio frequency levels at the school.
People have spoken during multiple board meetings, saying they are concerned about sending their children to the school due to potential health ramifications.
The board invited Haslinger to try to explain the technology to the attendees. He spoke about a lack of valid research into the issue as a main point.
Haslinger said the company plans to upgrade the towers to offer 5G capabilities, though they have not made the switch yet. Harbor Springs Superintendent Brad Plackemeier said the company will be upgrading the towers within the next few weeks.
There are five cell towers on top of the school. Two belong to Verizon, three belong to AT&T. AT&T’s 5G went on-air in October.
When upgrading these towers, the companies have 30 days to test frequency levels and send a report back to the district. Plackemeier said the district is still awaiting that report.
While the 5G capabilities are new to the towers, the cell towers themselves are not. The district signed leases with the companies in 1998 and 2000. The rolling leases automatically renew and specify that upgrades can be made to the towers, but they cannot physically be moved without board approval. This was put in place to ensure if the towers were moved the school would structurally be able to handle the new location of the towers.
More:5G upgrades officially 'on-air' at Harbor Springs High School
During public comment, people explained that they were concerned about a lack of communication about the towers being upgraded to 5G. The topic has been discussed at a number of board meetings, and agendas and minutes are available on the district website.
In his presentation, Haslinger said C-band is being added to the towers. He said that while it is being called 5G, it doesn’t reference the millimeter waves. He said the technology being added will essentially just offer more lanes of “traffic.”
“It's much more expansive and it's much more important to our customers in this area to handle capacity of your traffic in there,” he said. "We spent $50 billion on this technology to add this technology for customers."
He said using low or mid-band frequencies are more suitable for places like Harbor Springs than they are other places like big cities.
“In a big city where there's a lot of people and they all want data, they tend to go to the higher frequencies and they don't care that it doesn't go as far because there's so many people concentrated in a small space,” he said. “But in an area like here, you don't have people concentrated like that.”
People at the meeting were able to ask Haslinger questions, though he was unable to answer some — like who would be liable in the case medical issues were linked back to the cell towers in the future — without having a representative from the legal department there. He said he could get emailed answers back to them because he did not have the lease right in front of him.
People voiced their concerns that regulations written in the 90s are not adequate to deal with the amount of traffic that comes from data because the volume of people using phones is so much greater now.
When people spoke about concerns of brain cancer caused by the radio frequency levels, Haslinger said, “There are no plausible links to brain cancer.”
Subscribe:Check out our latest offers
One audience member said he has sent his son to school with a radio frequency measuring tool, and Haslinger said he did not think the device could possibly be properly calibrated to get accurate measurements.
"They’re incredibly inaccurate,” he said. “It’s very hard to make measurements, and unless you get a professional to do it, I’d take it with a grain of salt.”
Despite the community backlash about the towers, Verizon will still be following through with the upgrade plans in the coming weeks.
The next regular board of education meeting is scheduled for Dec. 12.
— Contact education reporter Karly Graham at kgraham@petoskeynews.com or on Twitter at @KarlyGrahamJRN.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: 5G is coming to Harbor Springs — Verizon says there's no need to worry
