Menacing New UK Mast Causes Unwarranted Concern in Town

A new mast, which is being built by a resident of the semi-rural town of Backwardtit, has triggered complaints from locals, with many being concerned about its impact upon human health, birds (particularly large Eagles) and certain ring wearing residents of a diminutive stature.

The concerns, however unsubstantiated, about the potential impact of the wireless signals on public health are nothing new, but the new tower appears to be causing even more of a stir among the local community than usual.

“We walked by the other day, and it’s just menacing! You can clearly see the signal, even before they’ve finished building it, and that’s having an awful impact on the local population, many of whom have developed unsightly skin conditions, terrible teeth and anti-social dietary requirements,” said one particularly short resident of the neighbouring community.

The project, which is the brainchild of a local teacher at the nearby Maia Primary School, is due to be completed by Mairon Melkor in the next few weeks. Under the plan, Mairon expects his mast to boost local connectivity for locals in the otherwise poorly connected community.

“Once live, the new tower will enable everybody to seamlessly communicate over long distances and obey my every command. We did have some issues with planning permission, it’s quite big and fairly bright at night, but those were resolved by politely encouraging the planning officers to see our way of thinking. In the end they classed the application more as a lighthouse, and it sailed through,” said Mr Melkor.

However, Melkor warned his plan for improving local connectivity is facing opposition: “The biggest trouble we’ve had is with our power supply, which connects this tower via a hydrothermal station inside the local mountain. A small number of locals keep walking inside and trying to throw small obstructive metal objects into the fuel supply, which contaminates it. We’ve also had a problem with large birds near the entrance.”

“Admittedly, we probably should have thought about building more redundancy into the system and not leaving the entrance open for everybody to access, that would have saved a lot of hassle. Perhaps our mistake was to assume that the local population of large spiders, which we’ve recently learnt are inexplicably afraid of light, would discourage such Ne’er-do-wells,” added Melkor.

The mast itself appears to have been affixed with a cross-polarised omni-directional antenna, albeit one that is limited to a lower frequency band, so the connectivity may not be as good as advertised, but it can still exert quite an influence over range.

The local county council is now said to be reviewing the application, which includes a picture of the nearly complete mast. A decision on what to do about the project is due to be taken later today by the leader of the local council, Mr Olórin Grey Istari.

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APRIL FOOLS.. Obviously (it helps if you’re familiar with the background of characters from the Lord of the Rings).

UPDATE:

Speaking of April Fools, Voneus today claims to have launched the Moodem, a small router which is attached to a cow’s collar and allows the public to log online with speeds of up to 50Mbps. “The device is set to revolutionise broadband capabilities in rural areas, often the site of poor or no internet access leaving lost commuters struggling to access maps on their phone or individuals unable to contact friends and family,” said the provider.

The Moodem, which connects to a small transmitter on a farmhouse or barn, is said to have a range of 1.5km which means those looking to go online can do so safely without having to stand next to cattle. Just to be clear, this is totally an April Fools :). However, it’s worth noting that some IoT devices, using 5G and LORAWAN technology, do in fact exist via a similar setup, albeit for tracking cattle and not acting as Wi-Fi hotspots (cows make for terrible Wi-Fi hotspots).