An old video of a cell phone tower that caught fire in 2018 shared as a 5G tower set on fire in India.

An old video of a cell phone tower that caught fire in 2018

Misinformation about 5G technology has been spreading across countries on social media, alleging that it poses an immediate threat to health and well-being. Those who have sharing such information are linking them to several unproven conspiracy theories, and have called for destroying such towers.

In this context, a recent video shared on social media shows a tower on fire, and the caption reads, “In India people are burning 5G towers.”

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Fact Check- 

We first looked for any recent reports of such incidents, but we couldn’t discover any. By performing a reverse image search on a screenshot from the video revealed that it was taken in 2018. The exact video was posted on a YouTube channel named “Hindxpress Tv” on January 27, 2018. The video description, written in Hindi, translates to: “A fire broke out in a mobile tower located in Barara sub-division in Ambala. The fire took a huge form in no time.”

The video is clearly from 2018, and so the tower in the video cannot be a 5G tower. The Economic Times article dated 23, February 2018 reports that Bharti Airtel and Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei have successfully conducted India’s first 5G network trial under a test setup at the former’s network experience centre in Manesar, Gurgaon.

According to an Indian Express article 5G services were only started in India on 1October, 2022.

This video was also shared on the Telegram channel called HATSTRUTH , which routinely shares misinformation and unsubstantiated claims to it’s over 100,000 subscribers. The video shared on Twitter also contains the ‘HATS’ logo in the top left corner of the video. 

Conclusion- 

Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the viral video to be False.

An old video of a cell phone tower that caught fire in 2018 has been shared as a recent 5G tower set on fire in India. We could not find more details of the viral video but the video is doing the rounds on the internet since January 2018 and India’s first 5G network trial under a test setup was conducted in February 2018.