Radio Frequency energy or RF has been in the news and is not likely to go away. Between 5G and COVID-19 conspiracies and more antennas RF will continue to be a hot button topic.
How can you educate yourself? There are a few online resources, free of charge, with reputable RF energy information. However, they are rather technical and heard and time-consuming to understand from the general public.
Molly Cooper, who is a tower installation expert and was a valuable SITA member until recently, has now embarked on a new project with eSystem Training that helps educate professionals and non-technical audiences about everything related to radio frequencies.
eSystem Training Solutions has an affordable, online course that was developed to provide general telecom workers with RF knowledge. A user taking the course will be able to recognize RF hazards and understand methods to reduce exposure to RF. If you live in a building with a tower nearby, or a building with antennas on the roof, or just want a little more information: The Fundamentals of RF course, can answer questions such as, what is RF?
Is RF harmful? How can I avoid RF energy?
For more information, please visit eSystem Training’s online course “ Fundamentals Of RF Radiation ”.
The course is entirely online and can be purchased 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week. Please consider watching this free video from the Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association to provide a quick introduction to antennas before you take the online RF course.
Other options for RF education.
The Federal Communications Commission, FCC, OET Bulletin 65 outlines guidelines for compliance with the FCC RF exposure limits. That document can be found here. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, has several resources available online, related to the standards for worker protection, RF hazards, RF and microwave exposure, safety programs and other resources. Many of these topics reference the FCC OET Bulleting 65 and are rather technical. Those topics can be found here. On this page there is a section in the middle, “Cellular Phone Base Stations and Hand Held Cell Phones”, which may be of particular interest to persons specifically interested in cell phone RF energy.
While free to access and use, these articles are technical in nature and not written for a general audience to gain comprehensive understanding of the material. You can also consider taking a Fundamentals of RF course geared for the average telecom field worker.
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I would like to install my own tower and lease space to ATT and Sprint.
What would you advise on how to get started?
Hi- first thing to do is get interest from AT&T and Sprint. Without that- you are wasting your time on anything else. It is easy to build an actual tower- nearly impossible to find a location that works for the carriers AND convince them to lease space on the tower. Here are two places that you can look for more information.
https://www.quora.com/Can-I-own-my-own-cell-tower-How-do-I-make-money-off-of-low-data-rate-transmissions-like-texting
https://www.steelintheair.com/get-a-cell-tower-on-your-property/