Without inundating me with conspiracy theories, what is the actual engineering and scientific story about 5G? My wife and I are looking at new phones and they are 5G. Techno nerds of GAW, what is the story?
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The 5G standard is publicly available so you can read it if you're so inclined.
Keeping it simple, it's the latest signal structure for new cell networks. It uses wider bands at higher frequencies so you can have more data and users but it's a shorter range, so you need more signal sources. Because they're shorter range and lower power, they'll be less conspicuous than the existing towers.
It can use beamforming to improve connectivity, so if multiple towers know where you are, they can time the transmission of a weak signal so they reach you at the same time and still keep you connected. In that way, it's 'unavoidable' but the power is lower than anything else we're exposed to now, sort of like GPS.
I don't think it's too much worse than anything else RF-related we've invited into our lives (WIFI, Bluetooth, cordless phones, microwaves) and if it's a lower power it's probably a bit safer.