SKA ‘dead zones’ rile farmers

A MAP showing how mobile phone use might be restricted because of a giant radio telescope in South Africa has angered people who will live near the instrument – deepening a rift between the local farming community and those backing the project.

The row has arisen over the South African portion of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which will eventually consist of thousands of radio dishes in Africa and up to a million antennas in Australia.

The array, which begins construction in 2019 for completion in the 2030s, will have a total signal-collecting area of more than 1km2, making it the world’s largest radio telescope.

The telescope’s first phase in South Africa involves 194 radio dishes, to be laid out like a galaxy with three arms spiralling out from a core cluster.

Local residents in the Northern Cape, where the government has acquired nearly 1 400km2 of land for the initial phase, have already expressed concerns about the telescope.

Some are angry that the SKA won’t boost the region’s economy as much as they had expected; others fear the land acquisition will damage local agricultural activity – in particular, sheep farming.

But the map of projected mobile phone coverage around the project, uploaded to Facebook on November 2, has brought to light another problem facing the local community. It shows the area around the SKA’s radio dishes where the use of electronic devices will eventually be restricted, because their signals would interfere with the relatively weak radio signals that the dishes will try to pick up from the distant universe.

Nearby residents had been aware that mobile-reception “dead zones” could be a side effect of the SKA.

But Eric Torr, a light-aircraft-business owner who uploaded the map, said it showed the area affected is “larger than we were led to believe”. The map suggests that six towns fall into the dead zone, he said, and that this could have serious implications for their farming economies.

The map was produced by the SA Radio Astronomy Observatory (Sarao), which is leading the SKA project in South Africa. Lorenzo Raynard, head of communications at Sarao, said it showed areas where mobile phone coverage could be reduced by 20% or more.

The chart was part of a presentation calling on businesses to submit alternative communications solutions for affected areas, he said.

An informal collection of farming organisations has already been working with the observatory to find alternative communications technologies, such as satellite phones, that can be used around the antennas, according to Henning Myburgh, a farmer in the area.

“Adequate electronic communications, especially for children, are a basic human right,” he said. Myburgh said the co-operative’s search had now moved to finding cell phone technologies that could coexist with the SKA and replicate the phone facilities the farmers currently had.

“This is a major shift and if possible will be a huge step forward,” he said.

Still, said Myburgh, there were farmers who were unhappy. “I don’t think that anybody will ever be happy with the situation, taking into account the massively intrusive nature of the project in the region,” he said.

Nicol Jacobs, who farms in the spiral arms, said the SKA was originally going to affect only two farms. He said he found out about the full extent of the telescope when the government began buying more farms.

“We’re going to be eaten piece by piece,” he said. Jacobs said he would like the government to return the bought farms to the agricultural community: “I will fight as long as I can,” he added.