How the Rollout of 5G Could Affect Insurance Claims

Mike: As you described in part from my bio, I spent the first half of my practice years doing insurance, defense litigation for the most part, representing a whole variety of entities, municipalities being one of those consistently in the group.

Then the second half of my career, I was asked actually by some of the municipal clients to get involved with some of the regulatory issues that they were facing in the rights of way, which is where the utilities operate. That’s where municipalities and the utilities meet. It’s usually a friendly, mutually helpful relationship but not always. I’ve spent the last 15, 20 years tussling, I suppose, with AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, DTEs, all the large utilities out there, on behalf of local government and local communities.

John: That leads well into our first question, Mike. What’s exactly involved in the 5G rollout?

Mike: 5G really did develop in response to the Obama administration when he rolled out the need for a broadband plan, and that is basically to improve our access to the Internet. The industry responded in large part with 5G. There were two ways they could have responded. One was to build fiber connections to everyone.

Arguably, maybe a better approach, but the industry has responded with upscaling its wireless product. This is referred to as 5G. The result is that they are attempting to add millions of new antennas, broadcast, and receiver, to their current stock and put those right down at the rights of way level right in the streets, and alleys, and public places.

John: What exactly is the timing of the rollout?

Mike: The industry would love to have had it done last week, but over the last 10 years, there’s been a lot of work at the FCC, in Congress, and the NTIA, federal agencies, and then that’s gone out to the States and then the local governments. The courts have been involved. That regulatory process all seems to have wound its way pretty well to a conclusion where the industry is starting to ramp up and actually start to build these things. We’re seeing more and more discussions about the appearance of these so called small cells in the rights of way because they’re showing up in front of folks’ homes.

John: What are some of the associated risks with this?

Mike: What I refer to as “rights of way cell towers” or “small cells”, are the industry adaptation from traditional facilities that transmit all of our connections to and from our cell phones and other wireless devices, mounted on Macro Towers, which are 100 to 200 foot towers out in the middle of Farmer Brown’s cornfield or some other somewhat remote location, and their reach is several miles.

The new technology to try and densify the bandwidth and get up to speeds that 5G is advertising, requires that these small cell towers be put very close to the consumer. The user of the bandwidth. The intent is to get these right down at street level including in front of our houses, or behind our houses, or on a utility pole, perhaps sitting at a point in the street where the kids are waiting for the school bus.

That is the concern. Because now, these transmitters that used to be several 100 feet in the air and maybe a mile away or more are right over our heads. They’re transmitting right through us, essentially. There’s been a lot of concern about what that means.

There are a couple studies that have been done recently, one report in 2018 by the US government. NTP, National Toxicology Program, issued a study that found exposure to these bandwidths could cause…I’m just going to read, John, if you don’t mind, a few lines because I’m not a doctor. I don’t remember these terms if I don’t see them.

The study found that these bandwidths and frequencies, referred to as radio frequency radiation, could cause and did cause in rats over a two year study cardiomyopathy, malignant schwannoma in the heart, malignant glioma in the brain, adenomas in the pituitary gland, adrenal cytomas in the liver, malignant glioma in the prostate, and a significant increase in DNA damage in the hippocampus cells of male rats.