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ITU Softens On the Definition of 4G Mobile

Posted by timothy on from the noun-is-the-name-of-a-thing dept.

alphadogg writes "After setting off a marketing free-for-all by effectively declaring that only future versions of LTE and WiMax will be 4G, the International Telecommunication Union appears to have opened its doors and let the party come inside. In October, the global standards group declared that after long study, it had determined which technologies truly qualified for its IMT-Advanced label, sometimes called 4G (fourth-generation). Only two systems made the list: LTE-Advanced, an emerging version of Long-Term Evolution technology, and WirelessMAN-Advanced, the next version of WiMax, also called WiMax 2. Neither is commercially available yet. Stripping the official 4G title from current LTE and WiMax, which both had claimed it, was the perfect foil for T-Mobile USA to wholeheartedly advertise its HSPA+ (High-Speed Packet Access) network as 4G. But in a recent press release about the opening of the ITU World Radiocommunication Seminar 2010, the august United Nations-affiliated agency appears to have caved in."

4 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. I'll have a go at it... by mevets · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Technological innovation in the mobile space has been swept aside by marketting innovation.

  2. Re:Can someone summarize the summary? by SuperSlacker64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, I just skimmed it, but it didn't make anything clearer. What I get from it and understand is this:

    • The ITU defines what 3G and 4G mean, and who can call their services by those names.
    • The ITU hadn't defined 4G officially, so LTE and WiMax called themselves 4G without official permission.
    • The ITU made a big long study on all this.
    • The ITU defined 4G, and neither LTE, WiMax, or any other existing '4G' network made the cut.
    • LTE-Advanced and WiMax 2 can be called 4G, but neither of them is in usage yet.
    • If you have a phone that says its 4G, it's lying.
  3. it's about time we got a better definition... by burtosis · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now if they would just redefine unemployed as employed we could fix the entire US economy in one fell swoop!

  4. The mobile tech formerly known as 4G by noidentity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All this activity over the definition of 4G? It's kind of interesting, because it so clearly shows the standard marketing activity of taking a word that evokes a feeling in people, and connecting that with some product. Here, 4G apparently evokes the feeling of "best phone technology", and it's a mad scramble to have particular technologies labeled with the term, so that people will feel it's the best phone technology (why? because it says so!). What does the term actually mean? Apprently very little, beyond being a historical artifact of this silly activity.