ITU's Definition Aside, T-Mobile Pushes 4G Label In New Ad Campaign

snydeq writes "T-Mobile has officially joined Sprint in pushing the promise of '4G' mobile services on consumers, despite the fact that, according to the ITU standards body, neither carriers' offerings constitute 4G mobile technology. In Sprint's defense, it has been advertising its WiMax-covered areas as 4G for nearly a year — technically not a lie because until last month 4G didn't mean anything, InfoWorld's Galen Gruman reports. But now that the ITU has provided a standard against which the FCC and FTC can judge truth in advertising, T-Mobile's new 4G ad campaign is a 'bald-faced lie,' Gruman writes." National ad campaigns take more than a month to coordinate, though — if the term was basically free-floating until last month (with quite a few candidate standards over the years), it seems hard to condemn companies too harshly for using a marketing catch-phrase.

Comments

Stupid ITU

[pavon]

This is stupid. The designators 2G 3G 4G have never been anything but simplistic marketing terms for grouping protocols with similar relative performance relative. LTE and WiMax both deliver significant improvements over previous technologies, so they need some designator to describe this to the general public. ITU drew an arbitrary line that excludes these technologies from being called 4G, while incremental improvements on them (LTE Advanced) do qualify. Why should a major upgrade be given a .5 designator, while minor improvement on that increments the major number?

These networks aren't any less capable as a result of ITUs announcement - it is the term 4G that is now less useful.

Re:orly?

[satsuke]

Your speeds are off by about a decimal place. In mobile data terms and technical terms it breaks down like this

1G = analog / AMPS service or similiar .. 2400bp/s on a good day plus whatever hardware error correction and data compression (MNP10) -- circuit switched technology (your taking a line on the tower
2G = CDMA / GSM(CDPD) base speed data - circuit switched at 9600bp/s
2.5G = packet switched CDMA 1X / GSM GPRS or EDGE .. nominally max 144kb/s .. usually 50-70kb/s .. GSM had different EDGE profiles for higher speeds .. but the base was in this range
3G = CDMA 1XEVDO / GSM HSDPA .. 3.1mb/s on CDMA .. up to 14.4mb/s and higher on GSM (though getting a contiguous spectrum block available for the full speed is problematic when mixed with voice traffic and paging channels
3.5G = current spec WIMAX and LTE .. nominal 10mb/s down .. biggest difference is it scales to higher data rates based on number of users .. whereas say 3G CDMA might have 3.1mb/s per sector .. wimax / LTE can deliver this per user given enough spectrum
4G = most recently published goalpost .. something like 100mb/s sustained mobile and higher in fixed / limited mobility scenarios .. WIMAX2 / LTE Advanced