In this paper, we prove explicit lower bounds for the cost of fast boundary controls for a class of linear equations of parabolic or dispersive type involving the spectral fractional Laplace operator. We notably deduce the following striking result: in the case of the heat equation controlled on the boundary, Miller's conjecture formulated in Miller (2004) [16] is not verified. Moreover, we also give a new lower bound for the minimal time needed to ensure the uniform controllability of the one-dimensional convection–diffusion equation with negative speed controlled on the left boundary, proving that the conjecture formulated in Coron and Guerrero (2005) [2] concerning this problem is also not verified at least for negative speeds.The proof is based on complex analysis, and more precisely on a representation formula for entire functions of exponential type, and is quite related to the moment method.