Cd'A agrees with Verizon on small cells that could aid 5G

In the not-too-distant future, when you look up along the streetlight posts or utility poles or phone line entanglements in Coeur d’Alene and discover a never-before-seen gray box, don’t worry. That’s just an invasion of technology.

If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, your smartphone may have already told you about this story before it was ever written.

Tuesday night’s decision by the Coeur d’Alene City Council to enter into an agreement with Verizon will allow the wireless provider the right to cast “small cell” technology throughout the city and potentially open Coeur d’Alene to the wireless giant’s developing 5G network.

“Obviously, the agreement is a first step,” Verizon’s Eastern Washington and Idaho public policy and community affairs director Jason Verduzco said. “That just gives us the right to be in the right-of-way. That’s all this [agreement] does. We still need to work with the city on putting together applications and following the city’s land use process, as well.”

Once installed, the small cell system will benefit Verizon customers by providing what essentially serves as a signal boost to reach its customers.

5G proponents have promised the new technology could deliver its fastest download speeds at one to two gigabits per second, though industry experts say those top speeds becoming commonplace are years away.

“Each carrier has a four-lane highway,” Verduzco said. “Essentially, what Verizon’s doing with our small cells is, we’re building another four-lane highway. So it’s going to take a while to build new … lines around the area.”

The more utilitarian advantage of 5G deals with how many devices can connect to the newer frequency at one time. 4G towers can connect approximately 100,000 devices per square kilometer, per Altran Technology reports. 5G, on the other hand, can theoretically connect closer to one million devices across the same distance. The newer technology promises civilization, Coeur d’Alene included, a closer connection to a realized IoT: the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things is a concept that spells out how internet-connected devices can talk to one another. In an ideally-envisioned IoT world, everything from household appliances to thermostats to televisions, something 5G promises to deliver.

The Verizon devices themselves — small cell boxes places strategically throughout Coeur d’Alene — are actually designed to boost current Verizon 4G frequencies. As 5G expands, those small cell boxes can be retrofit to disseminate both 4G and 5G signals from larger nearby towers.

The vote was not unanimous. Councilmember Dan Gookin grilled Verduzco on the health effects millimeter radiation can pose, saying the lack of testing was unsatisfactory.

“The exposure limits for this type of radiation has not been established,” Gookin contended.

Gookin went on to voice his concerns that city employees and Avista crews could potentially work at an unknown risk, citing federal exposure limits, and that the newness of the technology leaves a wide and deep unknown that Gookin said wasn’t addressed.

“I have concerns about the safety,” he said. “These things triangulate where your cellphone is, and they focus a beam of information right to your phone. If you’re walking downtown, and there’s three of these micro cells here, there’s three beams that are shooting through your head when you’re talking on the phone. And we don’t know what this technology is going to do, what these long-term effects are, because there’s no data. There’s no long-term data, because it’s new technology.”

No timeline or final map has been established as to when or where the small cells will be installed, though Verduzco told the council installation could begin by the end of 2020 or at some point in 2021. Verizon will pay the city $270 for each small cell device installed, as well as a $500 application fee. The term of the contract runs for 10 years, with exit options after five years. The only financial cost to the city will be the power the devices draw.