Light Reading Mobile – Telecom News, Analysis, Events, and Research
Light Reedy  
Sarah Reedy

ITU Backtracks on '4G' Definition

December 13, 2010 | Sarah Reedy |

5:10 PM -- The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) kicked off an all-out marketing war in October when it proclaimed that Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMax were not, in fact, 4G. Hence, the term FauxG was born and the term "4G" rendered meaningless. (See ITU Says '4G' Isn't and The Battle of FauxG.)

But, now, it appears the ITU is backpedaling on its definition. Buried in an ITU press release from last week, ABI Research analyst Philis Solis noticed that it said that the term 4G is designated for LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced, 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." (See ITU Ratifies LTE-Advanced.)

So, essentially, the ITU is claiming that even HSPA+ is "4G," whereas before it said not even LTE was worthy of the moniker.

The new definition doesn't change anything. It's still the network speeds, bandwidth, and latency that matter more than marketing, but the messaging is getting watered down.

It's all just fauxG to us now.

— Sarah Reedy, Senior Reporter, Light Reading Mobile


Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Network Computing encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

 
Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
 
More Light Reedy
CTIA: Mobile Show Adopts a Latin Vibe
The mobile industry is looking south where smartphones and services still have a lot of room to grow
MW13: Field Techs Are the Company
Move over actors and models. The field tech is becoming the real face of service providers
That Big Data Sinking Feeling
Analyze this? Or analyze that? The operator back-office data deluge is generating more questions than answers
Mobile Users Yearn to Churn, NSN Finds
A survey of 8,700 global wireless users suggest they'll jump ship if data quality isn't up to par
Nokia on the Road to Hell?
Shareholders are asking the Windows Phone maker to choose a different road, but none are paved with gold
Related Content
Most Popular
Read
White Papers SPONSORED CONTENT
Featured
Resource Library SPONSORED CONTENT
Spanning Tree
An Ethernet protocol that checks a network for loops