If you have visi­ted Ny-Åle­sund in recent years, then you have expe­ri­en­ced some­thing of a tech­ni­cal-cul­tu­ral para­dox: a sett­le­ment that, in many ways, is very modern and tech­ni­cal­ly advan­ced, but you couldn’t use your mobi­le pho­ne becau­se the­re was no mobi­le net­work.

Was. That is a mat­ter of the past now.

Ny-Åle­sund: a mast, but no anten­na.
Things have chan­ged. Now you can use your mobi­le pho­ne the­re as else­whe­re.

It has always been said that the elec­tro­ma­gne­tic field that comes with mobi­le net­work dis­turbs cer­tain high­ly sen­si­ti­ve sci­en­ti­fic tech­no­lo­gy. But that does actual­ly not app­ly for the fre­quen­ci­es of mobi­le net­work. It is inde­ed the case, howe­ver, for other fre­quen­ci­es, inclu­ding tho­se in the ran­ge of wifi/WLAN and Blue­tooth. The­se remain for­bidden in Ny-Åle­sund.

Cul­tu­ral­ly, this is a major step for the small sett­le­ment which has been mobi­le-pho­ne-free until the ear­ly win­ter of 2023. It is con­side­red to keep social places such as the mess­room mobi­le pho­ne free.

But for ever­y­day life, it is safe to assu­me that most peo­p­le will wel­co­me it, both tho­se who live and work the­re as well as tou­rists. Also sci­en­ti­fic work will bene­fit from easier com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, for exam­p­le as some mea­su­ring devices can now send their data rather than che­cking them regu­lar­ly in the field. Field safe­ty will obvious­ly also bene­fit.

And as men­tio­ned abo­ve: Wifi/WLAN and blue­toth will remain for­bidden.