How Will 5G Revolution Affect The Environment?

5G or the fifth generation of wireless is the latest wave of wireless technology that will surpass the current 4G Technology that is being used all over the globe. The first generation of wireless technology or 1G brought cell phones, 2G or second-generation text messaging, a 3G or third generation brought online capabilities and 4G brought the faster speed. 5G or fifth-generation wireless technology aims to bring the increased speed of data transfer, more responsiveness, and greater device connectivity simultaneously. 

Some people confuse the 5G Network with the 5 GHz frequency of the Wi-Fi Routers. 5G Networks is for cellular networks and is the latest generation of wireless technology while 5GHz frequency is an option that is available on most of the Wi-Fi routers nowadays and is accessible through the default gateway address of the routers such as or It should be clear that 5G is the fifth generation of wireless technology for broadband cellular networks while the 5 GHz frequency band is an option that is available on Wi-Fi routers and provides a faster data transfer speed with negligible interference.

5G Wireless Technology is meant to provide ultra-high data speaks, in Gbps with ultra-low latency or ping, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a uniform experience to more users. 5G will revolutionize the way how everything works in the digital industry. 

With that being said, let’s have a look at some of the impacts of 5G on the environment and how it affects the environment:

5G Energy Consumption

A concern that most people have regarding 5G is its energy consumption, how much energy will be consumed by 5G. In the current day, US Telecoms use about 31 million Megawatt-hours of electricity each year that is roughly equal to the energy consumed by about 2.6 million US households every year. 

Since the 5G network requires more power-hungry base stations in order to provide maximum coverage, it is expected to consume up to three times more power than is currently consumed by 4G and LTE Networks. This is a huge problem in countries that are dependent on the consumption of heavy fossil fuels for electricity generation. Although, some service providers have committed to the energy-efficient deployment of 5G networks by depending on renewable energy sources to decrease the consumption of heavy fossil fuels.

Is 5G Radioactive?

There is a common myth over the internet that 5G is radioactive and there is also a widely-circulated photo in which a worker was wearing a hazardous material suit and it said that the worker was on a 5G tower, however, that was all false. It has been proven that 5G cell towers don’t emit strong radiation. The frequency of 5G lies in the radio frequency spectrum which is not powerful enough to cause risk in humans and the cell towers also don’t emit strong enough radiations that can cause problems in humans.

Does 5G Cause Cancers?

There is another common misconception that 5G causes cancer in humans, which is a huge lie. It has been found that human skin deflects almost half of the power emitted by the 5G frequency waves. 5G uses the frequency waves in the radio frequency spectrum and these waves don’t have much energy to break down Human DNA molecules or induce mutations in them. While it is true that cell towers and smartphones do emit a small number of radiations, so do bananas and that doesn’t necessarily mean that bananas are bad for health.

5G Did Not Cause A Mass Bird Massacre

There was another fake news headline that a 5G network test caused the death of hundreds of birds. This news turned out to be a hoax and was launched by a 5G conspiracy group. Such fake news is headlines to create propaganda against 5G. 5G cell towers or antennas have not been found to have any sort of deadly impact on birds and they don’t put the environment at risk as some people are trying to portray by creating fake headlines about 5G.

5G’s Impact on Insects

5G’s Radio Frequencies are known to have an impact on Insects since insects rely on high-frequency waves for many things such as communication, detection of food, detection of predators, etc. Insects don’t have the same level of resistance to high frequencies as most vertebrates have and as a result, these high-frequency radio waves can have an impact on insects because more energy at higher frequencies and could lead to disruption in insect behavior, physiology, and morphology as time passes by due to an increase in the body temperature of insects because of more absorbed energy. Such trials need to be run on insects on a widespread level to find all the effects. 


5G is the future and it is slowly rolling out in different countries across the globe. Smartphone manufacturers have started developing 5G supported devices already and as of 2020, 5G has already been deployed in select areas in 60+ countries across the world, more or less.

  • So far, 5G has not been found to have any detrimental effects on human biology.
  • 5G is expected to use three times more energy than LTE due to the great number of base stations required
  • There are several misconceptions, hoaxes, and fake news about 5G, all of which have been proved wrong.
  • 5G does affect insects behaviour and insect biology but research needs to be done on this at a widespread level to find all about the effects of 5G radio waves on insects. 


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