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

orly?

[Pharmboy]

it seems hard to condemn companies too harshly for using a marketing catch-phrase.

Really? The whole purpose of the FTC is to insure companies don't use misleading catch-phrases. If a company sells 4G service, and another company falsely claims they do and gains customers, then yes, the first company is injured. They spent more money to actually provide the service that the second company only claimed.

Not only is it EASY to get harsh, but when companies flatly lie to customers, the price *should* be many times the amount of profit they made using the lie. Brushing it off as "only a marketing catch-phrase" is ignorant at best.

Re:orly?

[brainboyz]

Reminds me of the distinction between HiSpeed USB 2.0 and USB 2.0 Compatible.

Re:orly?

[BradleyUffner]

The problem then is that no company to date has "4g" service. Hell, most of them have 3G service only by a very loose definition. It seems that, so far no consumer has been mislead into thinking one particular service is better than another; they all stink!

That's exactly the problem he's talking about... By saying they have 4G service they are taking away customers from 3G providers.

If I have a choice between 2 phone providers, with everything being equal, each provider has a 50% shot at my money. If one of them falsely claims 4G coverage then the odds are I'll mistakenly choose them.

Re:orly?

[TubeSteak]

Sprint has been using the term 4G to mean 4th generation. 3G was only loosely defined and the ITU has now decided to arbitrarily specify stricter standards for 4G.

International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) says 4G != fourth generation

Sprint can call a brick a plane if they want, but there's a reason we have international standards bodies.
Remember when all those wireless-n cards were advertised as "draft n"? That's the right way to do it.

I think the moral of the story here is not to advertise using the name of an unfinished spec.

"it seems hard to condemn companies too harshly"

[Animaether]

it seems hard to condemn companies too harshly for using a marketing catch-phrase.

Hmm, no.. I'm not finding myself having any trouble doing this whatsoever.

Everybody knew there would be -a standard- referred to as 4G eventually... hijacking that for "marketing catch phrase" purposes gains them no sympathy other than from other marketeers.

Think of it this way.. if Microsoft were to start offering "IE9 with HTML 6 support" where "HTML 6" is not clearly defined, would you have any trouble whatsoever condemning them?

ITU Can shove it

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as i'd love to have the speeds the ITU declares 4g, I find it extremely rude they put such a high "requirement" to label 4G after 4G has been used as the name for the next level of speeds already.

Sprints WiMax network IS a different technology that gives higher speeds than 3G, so why wouldn't it be called 4G? its the 4th generation of tech.

For the ITU to come and say "no, you're not 4G, your 3.5G" is stupid.

They need to make their specs 6G or so, as for now those requirements are pretty far fetched.

Ignore the ITU, Sprint and Verizon do have 4G, just someones getting a lil too hopeful in the ITU dept.

When standards places start getting unrealistic, they lose the value of trying to follow them...

Re:Stupid ITU

[noidentity]

Exactly. The terms just mean the new generation of technology, an informal thing at best. It's like game consoles. Every cycle you have the "next generation" consoles. It's just a way to informally let someone know which cycle the technology comes from, relative to the current one in use and the new one being rolled in. Why don't people get up in arms about actual objective claims, like bandwidth or whatever?