5:50 PM -- Are you sick of the fauxG marketing wars yet?Clearwire LLC (Nasdaq: CLWR), MetroPCS Inc. (NYSE: PCS), Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S), and T-Mobile US Inc. are now all claiming to offer "4G" networks in cities; Verizon Wireless will soon join their ranks. In reality, however, all these operators are offering fauxG services, since none of the networks meets the 4G standards laid down by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) . In fact, the ITU recently came out and said that it sees the next generation of tech specs due to be standardized -- LTE Advanced and 802.16m -- as true 4G technology. These are likely to be years off commercial deployment.

Yet operators, in the US at least, appear to have stepped up their 4G marketing efforts. In one sense, it doesn't matter so much; after all, LTE, WiMax and even HSPA+ all do offer better mobile broadband performance than previous 3G standards.

Nonetheless, I do think operators would do well to manage their potential customers' expectations. When operators initially started to market their 3G services earlier this decade, hardly anyone knew what the term meant so it didn't matter so much if the early hype didn't match the actual reality.

Now ride around on the NYC subway, wander down a Chicago street, or grab coffee at a San Francisco Starbucks and people are talking wireless. Thanks to the 3G revolution and the devices enabled by it, like the iPhone, people are buzzing about wireless and jazzed about the explosion of choice they have in devices and services.

So, even if the average person on the street doesn't exactly know what "4G" is, at a technical level, they are much more au fait with the idea that this is the next phase in the mobile revolution, and many of them are excited by the idea of applications like video chat and streaming TV on their phones.

Overselling mobile broadband services as "4G" services is a quick way to make people sour on the whole concept. I think operators would be much better off giving us average performance times for applications and services we actually use rather than getting in a slap fight about "4G."

For instance, how about:

I'm sure you can think of other metrics that fit. I think these would give you a better concept of how the device actually performs on the network though, rather than some of the improbable maximum download speeds being bandied around.

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile