The 4G Truth

Many people have heard about cell phone companies selling products for their "4G" network, but is it really 4G? To find the answer, 4G must first be defined. The organization that is responsible for defining these standards is a group called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Most people probably have never heard of the ITU, but it has been around for 145 years establishing standards. So what does the ITU say the 4G standards are? Lets find out.

4G Specifications

The ITU established the IMT-Advanced specification, commonly called 4G, in 2008. This standard is pretty strict as to what is required to be called 4G. For example, for a user moving at high speeds (such as a car), the minimum download speed needs to be no less than 100 Mbit/s. A user moving at low speeds should be no less than 1 Gbit/s download speed. Compare that to the current claimed 4G networks and none of them meet even the minimum.

Sprint's 4G network delivers a maximum of "more than 10 Mbit/s." Verizon claims their 4G network is up to 12 Mbit/s. T-Mobile claims up to 21 Mbit/s on their 4G network.

The Lie

All of these cell providers are lying when they say their network is 4G. How is it they can get away with lying to everyone? I honestly do not know. Some may try to say they do it because other companies are doing it. Does that make it right to lie to your customers and potential customers? Absolutely not. Someone should sue these companies for false advertising. Not for money, just for them to stop using the term 4G until they actually have a 4G network. There are 2 proposed 4G networks in the works that are currently get their 4G certification, but we will not see it for many years. LTE-Advanced and WiMAX2 are currently being planned and these would meet the requirements for 4G.

The 3G Experience

PCWorld did some testing in 2009 to evaluate the current 3G networks and I am disappointd with the performance results. Sprint has a peak speed of 3.1 Mbit/s on their network, but the average connection speed was .8 Mbit/s. The other cell providers didn't fare much better. So at this point in time, you can expect an average of 1/3 of the peak speeds offered. Yes, there are many variables that can impact your experience such as your distance to the tower, number of people on the same tower, and the amount of activity on that tower.

The Future

Some of the CEOs of these companies expect people to embrace cell phones as the future and get rid of their landlines. Honestly, I see this as completely out of the question. While these technological advances are good, these claims and expectations are not going to happen in the near future. Here are the reasons why. First, the connection speeds and reliability are not too good as it is, and if more people switch to cell phone networks only the reliability will drop even more. Second, the speeds will suffer just as much. If we can only get 1/3 of the peak speeds as of right now, how much will it deteriorate if it gets saturated? Third, there are already download caps imposed by the cell phone providers. If I were to use the cell network as much as I use my at home broadband, my monthly bill would easily be over $1,000/month. I use Netflix streaming and watch other streaming video so this will easily push it up that high and the video quality will suffer because of the slow connection. Unless there are major changes, this will never work for me and I consider myself an average user.