ITU's Definition Aside, T-Mobile Pushes 4G Label In New Ad Campaign 120
snydeq writes "T-Mobile has officially joined Sprint in pushing the promise of '4G' mobile services on consumers, despite the fact that, according to the ITU standards body, neither carriers' offerings constitute 4G mobile technology. In Sprint's defense, it has been advertising its WiMax-covered areas as 4G for nearly a year — technically not a lie because until last month 4G didn't mean anything, InfoWorld's Galen Gruman reports. But now that the ITU has provided a standard against which the FCC and FTC can judge truth in advertising, T-Mobile's new 4G ad campaign is a 'bald-faced lie,' Gruman writes."
National ad campaigns take more than a month to coordinate, though — if the term was basically free-floating until last month (with quite a few candidate standards over the years), it seems hard to condemn companies too harshly for using a marketing catch-phrase.
I wish they called it 3.5G... (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess marketing won out. 4G is everything on data, while 3G is data/voice separated.
T-Mobile has been having some very competitive speed rates compared to Sprint/Clear's WiMax service, so anyone who offers faster wireless speeds is appreciated.
Now, if we can firmly plan the boot in the derriere of the cellular companies and get them to start getting Advanced LTE out on a large scale, we'll be set.
Re:Well what IS 4G then? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G [wikipedia.org]
All those "#G" designations are all pretty much bald-faced marketing lies... that barely even correspond to the (pretty useful) table at the bottom of that wikipedia page.
FWIW, the "3.5G" HSDPA network that T-Mobile has deployed works pretty damn well on my HTC Slide Android phone (running CyanogenMOD 6.0 ~= Froyo 2.2). The latency is noticeably lower than EDGE or 3G, and the Xtremelabs Speedtest routinely returns over 1Mbps downlink on their network.
They're probably "rounding up" for marketing purposes, but regardless of that, I'm pretty happy with T-Mobile's relatively cheap plans and just-enough-to-work technology deployment and service. Not to mention that they throw most features in by default and don't nickle-and-dime you to death for call forwarding, blocking, and voicemail features like some other carriers *cough*Verizon*cough*