we had a body of evidence. 5G involves all the technologies – the software, the hardware, the stuff that is contentious, the stuff already in use. People can become fixated on one tiny part of the infrastructure: small cell was thought by some to be dangerous. Some community members argued there was no evidence to show 5G small cell definitely isn’t dangerous (though it is approved by government regulators). There are confusingmessages out there. For example, 5G small cell uses ionising rays, which at a certain frequency are dangerous. But the frequency deployed in connectivity technology is not dangerous – and MANY did not use that particular technology anyway. But these messages are conflated and it is difficult for communities to understand what is safe and what is not. This concern drew attention away from the project’s environmental sustainability and energy efficiency savings, compared to older technologies. It was important to translate what we heard from the community for the project’s technical team. We refused to accept the ‘they’re anti-5G’ argument. We worked hard to ensure concerns and questions were heard. Part of our purpose was to give people the space where those questions could be aired, listened to and answered. This made our project different from other testbed projects. NOT CHANGINGMINDS Our job wasn’t to convince people we were right, it was to listen, to understand what people were telling us, and to pass it on to the right people in the right way. For the commercial partners, it was perhaps in their interest to change theminds of people in the community, but that was not our job – we weren’t making judgements, we were just listening and acting as a bridge between the different project stakeholders and the community, helping themunderstand each other. We did introduce experts and champions, who would come and speak to the community, to try to explain the technology. I don’t think we changed anybody’s mind from being anti-5G, but we provided information to people who wanted to understand more and move beyond 5Gmyths and rumours. We helped make difficult technical information more accessible, so people could consider and further explore their views. One communitymember was a retired scientist who felt strongly the area did not need 5G. They expressed their view that we were pro-5G and just presenting a case on behalf of MANY, but that was never our position. We still don’t believe a community that does not want 5G should have it imposed on them. MANY has held this position from the beginning – if this community, outright, tells us no, then we won’t put the 5G connectivity infrastructure in place. STILL NOT PERFECT We still see an issue with the set-up of this type of project. The project was DCMS-funded, and the lead on the project was a commercial company, who want to see if they can develop the tech, put it together, and deliver connectivity services at a commercial rate. One community member said: ‘You’ve already decided. You’re going to put this in anyway. So why are you bothering speaking to us?’ This is an important observation. Once DCMS signed a contract with the MANY partners, the money was there, and the project team were committed to installing trial connectivity technologies somewhere. At the same time, MANY was committed to not forcing these technologies on people who didn’t want them, despite the contractual obligations. This created significant tensions. The solution to the problem is tomove the research with communities to before the point of contract signing. With projects looking at contested infrastructure, research needs to take place beforemoney is allocated, so that project teams have evidence of community demand before work starts. We learnt a lot fromengaging with communities. We have developed a useful toolkit to help future projects plan engagement activities and use the voice of the community to shape what they deliver. We learnt the importance of inclusivity, developing peripheral vision, and the need to use a variety of mechanisms andmethods to connect people across the different project elements, to encourage knowledge exchange and sustain dynamic information flows so that the community voices reach all parts of the project. As to the lasting sustainability of the project, only time will tell. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 45 Professor KatyMason is the Associate Dean for Research in Lancaster UniversityManagement School and amember of theDepartment of Entrepreneurship &Strategy. k.j.mason@lancaster.ac.uk Dr SharonWagg is a Research Associate in the Department of Entrepreneurship & Strategy, with a research focus on digital inclusion initiative provision in rural UK communities. s.wagg1@lancaster.ac.uk MobileAccessNorthYorkshire (MANY) is a £6.5mproject funded by theUKGovernment Department for Digital, Culture, Media andSport (DCMS) a 5G testbed and trial initiative developing a 5Gdigital economy infrastructure inNorth Yorkshire. Partners include Quickline Communications, amix of specialist SMEs and theUniversity of York, aswell as researchers in Lancaster UniversityManagement School (LUMS) and Lancaster’s School of Computing andCommunications (SCC). A research output from theMANY project includes a communityengagement toolkit recommended for use on complex projects in place.
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