Can They Really Call it 4G?

[jranciano]

I was in a T Mobile store today and as many people know, TMo offers "Faux G", in the sense that theyo nly provide HSPA+.

I've always wondered, on what basis are they considering their faux G as 4G?


I asked one of the employees at the counter if she knew if TMo was going to stick with HSPA+ or transfer to LTE and I got the deer in the headlight look.


I just wish there was a clear and concise description of what 4G actually is. Wikipedia doesn't make it any easier for the average Joe...

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Requirements

In mid 1990s, the ITU-R organization specified the IMT-2000 specifications for what standards that should be considered 3G systems. However, the cell phone market brands only some of the IMT-2000 standards as 3G (e.g. WCDMA and CDMA2000), not all (3GPP EDGE, DECT and mobile-WiMAX all fulfil the IMT-2000 requirements and are formally accepted as 3G standards, but are typically not branded as 3G). In 2008, ITU-R specified the IMT-Advanced (International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced) requirements for 4G systems.

This article uses 4G to refer to IMT-Advanced (International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced), as defined by ITU-R. An IMT-Advanced cellular system must fulfill the following requirements:[3]

-Based on an all-IP packet switched network.

-Peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility such as mobile access and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility such as nomadic/local wireless access, according to the ITU requirements.

-Dynamically share and use the network resources to support more simultaneous users per cell.

-Scalable channel bandwidth 5–20 MHz, optionally up to 40 MHz.[4][4][5]

-Peak link spectral efficiency of 15 bit/s/Hz in the downlink, and 6.75 bit/s/Hz in the uplink (meaning that 1 Gbit/s in the downlink should be possible over less than 67 MHz bandwidth).

-System spectral efficiency of up to 3 bit/s/Hz/cell in the downlink and 2.25 bit/s/Hz/cell for indoor usage.[4]

-Smooth handovers across heterogeneous networks.

-Ability to offer high quality of service for next generation multimedia support.

In September 2009, the technology proposals were submitted to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as 4G candidates.[6] Basically all proposals are based on two technologies:

-LTE Advanced standardized by the 3GPP
-802.16m standardized by the IEEE (i.e. WiMAX)

Present implementations of WiMAX and LTE are largely considered a stopgap solution that will offer a considerable boost while WiMAX 2 (based on the 802.16m spec) and LTE Advanced are finalized. Both technologies aim to reach the objectives traced by the ITU, but are still far from being implemented.[3]

The first set of 3GPP requirements on LTE Advanced was approved in June 2008.[7] LTE Advanced will be standardized in 2010 as part of the Release 10 of the 3GPP specification. LTE Advanced will be fully built on the existing LTE specification Release 10 and not be defined as a new specification series. A summary of the technologies that have been studied as the basis for LTE Advanced is included in a technical report.[8]
Current LTE and WiMAX implementations are considered pre-4G, as they do not fully comply with the planned requirements of 1 Gbit/s for stationary reception and 100 Mbit/s for mobile.

Confusion has been caused by some mobile carriers who have launched products advertised as 4G but which are actually current technologies, commonly referred to as '3.9G', which do not follow the ITU-R defined principles for 4G standards. A common argument for branding 3.9G systems as new-generation is that they use different frequency bands to 3G technologies; that they are based on a new radio-interface paradigm; and that the standards are not backwards compatible with 3G, whilst some of the standards are expected to be forwards compatible with "real" 4G technologies.
While the ITU has adopted recommendations for technologies that would be used for future global communications, they do not actually perform the standardization or development work themselves, instead relying on the work of other standards bodies such as IEEE, The WiMAX Forum and 3GPP. Recently, ITU-R Working Party 5D approved two industry-developed technologies (LTE Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced)[9] for inclusion in the ITU’s International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (IMT-Advanced program), which is focused on global communication systems that would be available several years from now.


4G and near-4G systems

The wireless telecommunications industry as a whole has early assumed the term 4G as a shorthand way to describe those advanced cellular technologies that, among other things, are based on or employ wide channel OFDMA and SC-FDE technologies, MIMO transmission and an all-IP based architecture.[citation needed] Mobile-WiMAX, first release LTE, IEEE 802.20 as well as Flash-OFDM meets these early assumptions, and have been considered as 4G candidate systems, but do not yet meet the more recent ITU-R IMT-Advanced requirements.

[beamolite]

I would be ecstatic if I could even get 3G in my town with T-Mobile. The worst part about it is they have no definitive timeline when we will get it either.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[raino]

The way 4G speeds were originally defined (1Gbit/s stationary, 100Mbit/s on the move), no one attained them. I think not even current deployments of LTE/WiMAX touch original 4G speeds.

LTE and WiMAX were relatively up there in speeds, so Verizon and Sprint started calling these networks 4G (since they were, you know, faster than 3G.) Not to appear deploymentally delayed, T-Mobile labeled its HSPA+ network 4G too. AT&T then did the same for their HSPA+ network.

So how can T-Mobile get away with misinformation? Well, the argument was that since no one was actually hitting 4G speeds but everyone was calling their >3G networks 4G, they could do so too, never mind HSPA+ is nowhere nearly as fast as LTE or WiMAX...

Then, the definitions for 4G were revised. Now LTE and WiMAX come pretty close to the revised 4G speeds. HSPA+....still not so much.