By Kaspar Manz
With nearly every household in Switzerland having at least one mobile phone, the freedom to make phone calls, send texts and access the Internet without the constraints of any wires has taken the country by storm. Yet most people will forget what it takes to make this ease of access possible. With antennas tucked away on rooftops and camouflaged as trees, few people think how much data is zipping around in the air around us.
There are some though that are concerned about the increasing number of mobile phone towers that are being erected in order to satisfy the demand for ever more bandwidth. They fear that the electromagnetic waves have an adverse effect on the human body; that it might, amongst other things, cause cancer.
As the following maps show, it is indeed hard to find a place in Switzerland that has no coverage.
The distribution follows a simple economical pattern: where there are people, there will be mobile phone antennas.
If you are on the lookout for some peace and quiet, either from electromagnetic radiation or from the demands of an always-on smartphone on your attention, you should go for corners with as little population as possible. Of course, these might be hard to find in Switzerland where are even the most remote valley has its own winter sports resort.
The other, more radical approach, of course, would be to move into the Radio Quiet Zone, like the one in Virginia. Unfortunately, with its small size, it is unlikely that Switzerland will ever get one of those.
