ITU Rules That WiMax, LTE Don't Qualify As 4G 137
GMGruman writes "It's official: All those ads and vendor claims about 4G services being offered today or being right around the corner are fiction. The international standards body ITU has ruled that Clearwire's WiMax network and the LTE systems that Verizon and others are just starting to roll out are not in fact 4G services. Oops."
Re:Who cares ? (Score:3, Informative)
You know, new generation of tech is specifically meant to address the "limited data rates , and limited bandwidth due to over-congested areas" stuff; at least in theory.
LTE-Advanced standards qualify for 4G (Score:3, Informative)
LTE-Advanced did qualify for 4G,
http://www.3gpp.org/ITU-R-Confers-IMT-Advanced-4G [3gpp.org]
but it's just a set of standards for now afaik, that still need to be implemented.
4G = 100Mbps (Score:1, Informative)
Clearwire's WiMax and Verizon's LTE networks operate between 3-12Mbps.
Boys better stop advertising 4G...
Re:And they did the same thing with 3G (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, no. The other way around.
ITU includes EDGE in "3G" - but no carrier does it AFAIK, despite current revisions of EDGE being close to the speed of first "real" 3G/UMTS; and future revisions surpassing it noticeably.
At least with currently available infrastructure of LTE, there should be decently straightforward upgrade path to LTE Advanced (the "true 4G" apparently...). Maybe they're fed up mainly with WiMax, which does seem more like a quick marketing gimmick.
First large-scale LTE in the world? (Score:4, Informative)
The ITU's current technical definition in no way affects our plans to launch the world's first large-scale LTE network later this year.
Ahem... Stockholm and Oslo already did that while back. I do think they are part of what you call "the world".
Re:HSPA+ (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Insert more coins to continue (Score:4, Informative)
. . . whatever the ITU is . . .
The ITU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union [wikipedia.org] is pretty damn important. They define all sorts of worldwide standards for the telecommunication industry.
If you visit Geneva, take a walk by their headquarters.
And you do? (Score:2, Informative)
I guess that ITU - the organization that defines what constitutes as 4G and what doesn't - does know what 4G means. And apparently, they think that LTE is just not big enough leap that it could be compared to the difference between GSM and UMTS, for example.
It is kinda like Web 3.0. A marketing term we hear every now and then when yet another company tries to claim that they've reinvented the web... But the difference is never comparable to that between 1.0 and 2.0 (the transition from company websites to social media and user generated content) so we haven't started calling any such technologies/services/concepts as Web 3.0... Even if they have been new.