Let me share something interesting this morning. On top of our 18F residential building, I observed two suspicious equipments. They are suspicious because they tried too hard to look like a typical air-condition outlet. They are obviously not. Look at the front. The hole for the fan, and the grids are all drawn. On the side, they also tried so hard to look like an air-con.

There are two of this pointing to the south east direction.

There are long cables connected to the equipments – pretty thick cables, and when I trace the cables, they go all the way to the elevator’s room, and down to the first floor, and I don’t know where they go.

If you look from downside, you see this box in the bigger box.

Antena for Mobile

My guess is, it is an antena from either China mobile or China Unicom. Why does it tried to hide themselves?

The Conflict: Who Owns a Residential Area

The mobile operators have to install antena to ensure its coverage. With rising concerns about the radiation, many residents rejects the request to put an antena somewhere near them. However, there is no strong enough residential committee yet (or Homeowner’s Association), the rejection is mainly sentiment, not real action. To smooth the anger, many of the new antena hide themselves by trying to appear as something else.

If you really pay attention when walking around in residential areas, you may see many of them. Air-con is one of the most effective one. There are antena trying to mimic a street light pole, or as part of the building (with brick patterns at surface), or even bill boards. It is hard to discover, and the anger goes away. But the problem is, how about radiation, and how about the trust?

I believe I am the very few people in this building to be aware of the installation. Obviously it is not an informed and welcomed action.