Streamlined 5G buildout puts ‘ground furniture’ in Houston’s front yards By Dwight Silverman, Staff writer
Dirk Wijnands and Adeline Pang hadn’t paid much attention to the coming 5G wireless data revolution until its building blocks were installed without warning on the couple’s Montrose-area lawn.
In September 2019, work began on the street near their home on Elmen near Westheimer as contractors dug trenches to install fiber optic cable. Shortly afterward, a box resembling an oversized dorm room refrigerator appeared on their lawn, next to a wooden utility pole that had been placed earlier.
“Three weeks after the work began, they hung a little tag on our doorknob that said something like, ‘Oh we are doing some work on your lawn,’” Wijnands said. “They’d work on it for two or three days in a row, then I wouldn’t see them for five days, and then they’d be back.”