"The Dirty Secret of Today’s 4G: It’s Not 4G"
<< Both Sprint (WiMax) and Verizon (LTE) have handsets that qualify as real "4G". >>
So sayeth the marcomm hypesters from both firms (and also their counterparts at T-Mobile USA and AT&T Mobility in re HSPA+). To be sure we are a nation of gullible folks that are easy marks for them and it is fitting that the nationwide 4G battles started here while many les susceptible are waiting for "True 4G" -- i.e. commercial implementations of fully standardized IMT-Advanced due in a few more years.
Sprint's iEEE's 802-16e WiMax (which is the 6th sanctioned ITU IMT-2000 '3G' technology and Verizon's 3GPP Release 8 LTE are as much "real 4G" as 1xRTT or EDGE are "real" 3G access modes, and of course AT&T Mobility's HSPA+ if not "true 4G" is also every bit as real as Sprint's or Verizon's current ersatz 4G access technology offers. even if not quite as fast.
<< If you want to use the definition as used by the industry outside of AT&T and T-Mobile, you would drop HSPA+ from the definition since it doesn't use OFDM and its speeds don't match LTE or WiMax. >>.
Whether the access technologies are OFDM/OFDMA or CDM/TDM based has absolutely nothing to do with the price of onions under discussion here, and purists in the industry will wait for commercial implementations of IEEE 802.16m WiMax and 3GPP LTE Release 10 ITU IMT-Advanced before hanging out the 4G tag.
The ITU has again chosen some weasel words to deal with the subject ststing that the term 4G is undefined but may be (already was) applied to LTE, WiMax, and evolved 3G technologies thus granting poetic license to the hypesters.
"Following a detailed evaluation against stringent technical and operational criteria, ITU has determined that “LTE-Advanced” and “WirelessMAN-Advanced” should be accorded the official designation of IMT-Advanced. As the most advanced technologies currently defined for global wireless mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as “4G”, although it is recognized that this term, while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMax, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed. The detailed specifications of the IMT-Advanced technologies will be provided in a new ITU-R Recommendation expected in early 2012.".
gizmodo.com 
Cheers,
- Eric - |
