SKA Could Detect Earth's Cell Phone Network within 5 Lightyears

As the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope arrays continue to build out in Australia and South Africa, the potential resolution of this massive radio astronomy project is enormous - enhancing the possibility of discovering extraterrestrial signals. Some current estimates propose that leakage radiation from something like Earth’s cellphone network could be detected within a radius of 5 light years.

You can see the SKA overall projected sensitivity (min detectable reference signal at 100 light years) in the graph below (solid green line - Trenblay et al., 2026).

Read more here: Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence with the SKA

Ability of world-wide radio telescopes to detect transmissions by frequency