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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.
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.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
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?
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...
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.