The public WLAN in the Upper Swabian town of Wangen has been being switched off daily from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. this month. The city administration wants to enable people who feel negatively influenced by the WLAN to have a good night’s sleep. The “Alliance for Responsible Mobile Communications” campaigned, and an agreement was quickly reached with the city administration. Wangen limited the temporary shutdown to the hotspots in the old town, where the number of accesses in the relevant time was low anyway.
In Ravensburg, about 30 km from Wangen, there are similar plans to relieve people who feel electrosensitive. The city wants to comply with the requests of a citizens’ group that deals with the issue of mobile phone radiation to switch off the public WLAN at night. The city intends to switch off the hotspots from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., making a contribution to minimizing overall radiation exposure.
Although switching off the WLAN could bring an improvement for residents of the old town and reduce the number of police and security services, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) does not advise it. According to the BfS, the field strengths of electromagnetic fields from WLAN routers usually remain well below the recommended limit values that protect against all proven health effects. The BfS recommends that manufacturers observe minimum distances for close-to-the-body operation.
The “Alliance for Responsible Mobile Communications Germany” was founded in December 2020 as an informal merger of 197 critical citizens’ initiatives, associations, and organizations on 5G, Mobile radio, and electrosensitivity. They aim to bring information about responsible and health-friendly use of mobile radio to citizens, schools, and institutions. The alliance sees itself as a “supporter for EHS sufferers in the sense of educating citizens and doctors about the problem, recognizing EHS as a disease, networking those affected by EHS to ease their burdens”. EHS stands for Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity.