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But the basic technology behind LTE and LTE-A is the same. LTE, whether "3.9G" or "4G" is still significantly more spectral-efficient than UMTS/HSPA, which is the older 3G network that T-Mobile successfully petitioned to be deemed "4G." In a lab, yes, HSPA can get speeds of 14.4Mbps or 21Mbps, but in the real world, LTE significantly outperforms HSPA.

Right, I've used T-Mobile's HSPA+, and it isn't nearly as fast as their claims. I've never exceeded a few mbs per second, let alone getting anywhere near the theoretical 14.4 - 21Mbps.

In real word use, it's barely faster than Sprint.
 
That's not how the world works. If everyone (or nearly everyone) calls HSPA+ "4G", it basically is, for all intents and purposes.

That's how marketing and general usage terms work. As a botanist, you can insist forever that a tomato is a fruit, but for Joe Consumer, it's a vegetable (the culinary/grocery definition).

If the "4G" term was really in question, there would be lawsuits left and right. Note that these organizations _do_ have the power to change things.

For a while, Palm kept on mimicking Apple iPhones so Palm handsets would sync with iTunes. The USB governing board put a halt to that when they warned Palm that the company was out of compliance (spoofing IDs) with the agreed USB specification.

You need to wake up and learn how the world works.

Oh, and the word is "excerpt", not "exert."

By your logic, if enough people decide to change a standard, then the standard itself is changed. Interesting. So if enough people start using a 10 day work week, the typical week will become 10 days even though the internationally agreed upon standard is 7 days? Or if all the mathematics, scientists, and educators of the world decide to change the length of a meter to exactly 20 inches worth of length, it'd change? Even if the magic rod, from which all meter standards are derived from, designating the length of a meter in the French vault hasn't changed at all? What if all auto manufacturers of the world decided to change what they call a mile, just so that their cars can claim to go the fastest? Should the governing bodies of the world change to the auto manufactures' standard as well?

Your logic is just as flawed as mine or any others'.

Saying that the ITU has power is the same as saying the international court in the Netherlands has jurisdiction and power of the whole world. It can decree and proclaim what ever it wants, but in the end the nations' own government holds the power.
 
4G is a standard set forth by the ITU. The standard states 4G must be able to reach 100Mbps when moving at highway speeds and 1Gbps when stationary.

The ITU has not yet defined exactly what 4G is. What the ITU has actually said over the years was:

"The new radio access interface(s) are envisaged to handle a wide range of supported data rates according to economic and service demands in multi-user environments with target 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 (Fig. 2).

"These data rates are targets for research and investigation. They should not be taken as the definitive requirements for systems beyond IMT-2000."


-ITU - Framework and overall objectives of the future development of IMT-2000 and systems beyond IMT-2000

The ITU, btw, used to say that EDGE was "3G". Nobody else, even the carriers, supported that idea. The ITU is not exactly the smartest United Nations group when it comes to naming things.

4G is a marketing tool that AT&T uses that basically is just a faster, tweaked version of 3G. Some refer to it as 3.5G.

Exactly. Apple bent to carrier requests and started showing "4G" for HSPA+ back when some carriers knew they were behind with LTE deployment.
 
By your logic, if enough people decide to change a standard, then the standard itself is changed.
Correct, at least for common usage like much on American English.

If the correct word is "inflammable", but oil & gas companies think that is confusing for Joe Consumer, they print "flammable" on tanker trucks, etc. which eventually becomes a dictionary word because it becomes the commonly accepted term.

What about spam? No organization decided that this trademarked lunch meat would become the term for unwanted commercial e-mail, it just happened that way.

In this case, the ITU relaxed the definition of "4G" and since then, the American public seems to believe that it means "faster than what you think of as 3G."

Your biggest problem is that you keep referring to a disputed, highly technical, possibly antiquated technical term in the context of the language of a consumer technology as referred to by consumers. You don't understand how to speak to your audience.

Basically, you are WRONG because the ITU doesn't even talk the way you do. They have accepted reality, you haven't.

Thus, Rip Van Winkle.
 
But the basic technology behind LTE and LTE-A is the same. LTE, whether "3.9G" or "4G" is still significantly more spectral-efficient than UMTS/HSPA, which is the older 3G network that T-Mobile successfully petitioned to be deemed "4G." In a lab, yes, HSPA can get speeds of 14.4Mbps or 21Mbps, but in the real world, LTE significantly outperforms HSPA.

Right, I've used T-Mobile's HSPA+, and it isn't nearly as fast as their claims. I've never exceeded a few mbs per second, let alone getting anywhere near the theoretical 14.4 - 21Mbps.

In real word use, it's barely faster than Sprint.


Hmm. In my area, and, usually when I travel, I get 9+ with T-Mobile HSPA+, and, 1+ with AT&T. T-Mobile also lets you tether, included. I guess you live in an area without good T-Mobile service. A lot of folks are reporting very good results on Verizon with LTE I notice.
 
Hmm. In my area, and, usually when I travel, I get 9+ with T-Mobile HSPA+, and, 1+ with AT&T. T-Mobile also lets you tether, included. I guess you live in an area without good T-Mobile service. A lot of folks are reporting very good results on Verizon with LTE I notice.

Verizon will always be better than T-mobile as Verizon LTE can also run on the 700MHz band, which will give you a better coverage.
 
2G (Slowest Speed)
E (slightly faster than 2G)
3G (Slightly Faster than E)
H (Much Faster than 3G, and basically called 3.5G)
H+ (Average Signal in American Countries sometimes called 3.85/3.9G)
4G (is the short "called" version of LTE, Fastest of all Networks common mostly in Asian Countries like Singapore, Korea.
 
"4G" is fake 4G, it's actually just late-stage 3G HSPA speeds disguised as "4G". LTE is the actual official 4G technology. The same stunt was pulled recently, when some carriers claimed late-stage LTE as "5G-E", which is fake 5G.

Of the possible signs your iPhone can display, 1x and E are 2G, 3G and 4G are 3G, LTE and 5G-E is 4G
 
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