4G? Not really…
In my first post, we took a brief look at the history of cellular networks and some specifics of 3G. Sprint recently announced that they will be offering 4G networks. But in reality, there is no such thing as a 4G network yet.
The 4G standard is formally known as the International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (IMTA) standard by the International Telecommunications Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R). That’s a long, fancy name for “better, faster, and more reliable than 3G”.
The biggest change between 3G and [the future] 4G is that 4G moves to an all IP-switched network and the goal is to provide approximately 10x higher data rates for all users. This will be achieved by basically bypassing existing cell phone networks and achieving a fully mobile broadband (exactly like the FCC plan for rural broadband). There are two main groups that are working toward meeting the IMTA standard. Those groups are IEEE with Wimax (802.16e) and LTE with the LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) protocol. However, neither of the two groups have hardware that is up to par with the official 4G standard.
So far, I would say that IEEE is in the lead because WiMax is the standard used by Sprint and Sprint is the only wireless provider in the United States that is advertising 4G at this point. That is not to say that LTE-A is not doing comparatively well though. From the specs I have seen, WiMax is at a 56 Mbits/s uplink with a 100 Mbits/s downlink to LTE-A’s 50 Mbit/s up and 100 Mbits/s down. I sincerely doubt anyone can physically tell the difference in +/- 6 Mbit/s up speeds. But LTE says that their newest standard is not even scheduled to be released until 2011, which means that there is not likely to be any equipment that meets the standards until then (by the way, Verizon and AT&T claim that they will be using the LTE standard). Regardless, neither competitor is anywhere near the nominal 1 Gbit/s (only when the device is not moving) speeds that the 4G standard is pushing for.
Why would you call a network 4G if it doesn’t yet meet the standards by the main organization over telecommunications? Mostly because the majority of consumers don’t really care that much about standards. In fact, most consumers probably won’t even read the fine print at the bottom of the Sprint 4G page that clearly states “up to 10x faster claim: based on download speed comparison of 3G’s 600 kbps vs. 4G’s 6 Mbps. Typical published 3G average speeds (600 kbps-1.7Mbps); 4G average speeds (3-6 Mbps).”. I think we can all do the math on that.
As with everything I have discussed, there are several more details about the 4G standard that could be covered. But they are all more technical items about data transmission schemes, advanced network protocols, antenna configuration, etc that very few people care to read about. Basically, today’s “4G” as advertised by Sprint is not up to par with the standard defined by the ITU. We will just have to wait and see how long it takes IEEE and LTE to get everything up to speed or if the official standard will be changed based on what can actually be done with today’s technology
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