I’m not saying that operators should get away with calling their services whatever G they like, but if 4G is intended to be used as a means of communicating to customers, making the cut-off point between 3G and 4G simply OFDMA doesn’t cut it either.

As a Field Service Representative that deals in restaurant cooking equipment, we frequently are embroidered in “Next Generation” controls. Controls that are more “Futureproof”. I will explain the correlation shortly.

I had a problem with the ITU’s lack of discipline in creating a clear cut definition of “4G” and wrote to them extensively on the terminology.

So, In order to reach the goals set by the ITU, third generation networks are simply not equipped to handle the requirements. A fourth or “Futureproof” generation network needs to be constructed to do so. Verizon Wireless and Clearwire/Sprint had begun to do so. And now recently, AT&T. So essentially a brand new network is the next generation. In this case a fourth. The ITU’s lack of discipline has caused great confusion with consumers. Tmobile and AT&T took advantage of the anemic definition and ran with it as a marketing tool. This was completely unfair to the carriers spending billions to meet the requirements. In the end, this caused The ITU to essentially rescale the definition of what is considered 4G and became a bag of irrelevancy. I hope with this new requirement, the ITU will place severe penelties on carriers that misrepresent the technology definition or it will become a joke once again.

John B.

ad-free) android app to track speed over time and location, compare to others and other carriers. Thought i would share here:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.spdreality.SpeedReality

I agree and by getting overly excited we just set ourselves up for disappointment, don’t we?

As for the marketing I agree that operators need to be able to communicate with their customers properly, but there is no consistency or standards. What the operators call 4G today varies wildly. That’s why I just suggested mobile broadband. Customers know what broadband is and if carriers don’t deliver what experience on the smartphone as they’d get at home, they know they’re being duped.

I think the over exuberance likely reflects a deep misunderstanding of what the wireless standards actually mean. In fact, when you consider the spectrum constraints along with the broadband applications enabled today by LTE, its’ fairly reasonable to conclude that it isn’t likely that we’ll even need speeds approaching 1 Gbps.

I’ll add that the carriers need to package their services for marketing purposes as most consumers aren’t knowledgeable about wireless technologies in general. Hence, 2G, 3G, 4G, etc. are marketing terms, but are necessary from a consumer messaging point of view. In fact, I’d argue that if the carriers did not have a simplified message such as 4G or LTE, then most of the media would likely skewer the carriers for “muddied advertising” full of “tech speak.”