The deployment of 5G is debated in France
The auction for the allocation of the first 5G frequencies must be held in September in France.
REUTERS / Tingshu Wang
Text by: Alexis Bedu Follow
4 min
What future for 5G in France?
This fifth generation of mobile network is the subject of debate.
It will provide a faster Internet connection for smartphones.
But elected officials and citizens are opposed to this new technology when the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, he praises it.
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The deployment of 5G
is well underway.
The auction phase for the allocation of frequency blocks will begin at the end of September.
The four main telephone operators will share these frequencies among themselves.
Eleven 10 megahertz blocks, which will be accessible from 70 million euros per unit.
The effective deployment of 5G will only take place from the last two months of the year.
By 2020, each operator must have deployed 3,000 5G sites.
An innovation criticized
Voices have been rising, especially on the left, for several months against 5G.
There are questions: what will be the ecological impact of this new technology?
Will there be an impact on the health of the population?
This Sunday, September 13, about sixty elected officials including the environmental mayors of Bordeaux, Lyon, and Marseille, or Yannick Jadot and Jean-Luc Mélenchon signed a platform requesting the holding of a “
decentralized democratic debate
”.
“
5G is part of a techno-scientist headlong rush.
Digital emits 4% of all greenhouse gases, this should be double within five years
, explains Eric Piolle, mayor of Europe Ecology the Greens of Grenoble, fierce opponent of 5G.
In France, a lot of people are in white zones and do not have access to the Internet.
Should we switch to a new technology that will consume even more energy or should we give the Internet to everyone
?
"
"
No return to the oil lamp
"
5G is a technological revolution that worries and unleashes passions.
Some anti-5G associations question our model of society.
The Pièces et Mains d'Oeuvre collective explains in a recent text that "
5G is the latest wave of the technological boom that is accelerating the incarceration of man-machine in the machine-world
"
.
These opponents define themselves as
"
a minority refusing dehumanization through automation
".
The President of the Republic responded to these various detractors this Monday, September 14 in front of a hundred entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs of "French Tech".
"
France will take the turn of 5G because it is the turning point of innovation,
assures Emmanuel Macron
.
I hear many voices being raised to explain to us that we should take up the complexity of contemporary problems by returning to the oil lamp.
I do not believe in the Amish model
, ”he added, referring to this religious community in North America, austere and outside any progress of the outside world.
Environmental NGOs criticized these comments, recalling that the citizens' convention on the climate desired by the president had proposed a moratorium on the deployment of this technology.
“
The moratorium on # 5G does not emanate from the Amish (let them be alone) but from the French drawn by lot for the Citizen's Convention for the #climat that Macron himself set up.
But apparently, he did not believe it either
, "tweeted Clément Sénéchal, spokesperson for Greenpeace.
5G consumes less than 4G, but to function it needs more antennas.
For energy transition experts, there is now a consensus to say “
that 5G equipment consumes three times more than 4G equipment
”.
Many clarifications are requested.
A report written by the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (IGAS) and the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) excludes any health risk and encourages the implementation of 5G.
► To read also: 5G: towards a ban of Huawei from mobile networks in France?
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