From David Roffey
Gabriel Bodard objects to health concerns about home-based cellphone base stations being described as a “marketing” problem (26 April, p 20), but in this case the description is accurate. Femtocells, which only need to reach out a few hundred metres, put out considerably less radio-frequency energy (typically less than 10 milliwatts) than the phone itself – typically more than 200mW, and more when it is communicating with a base station up to 15 kilometres away.
So anyone who is worried about electromagnetic pollution enough to be scared of a femtocell base station will have no problem, because they will not have a cellphone. For those who do, the problem is one of understanding, solvable by marketing.
Sydney, Australia
