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Eh, original LTE technically wasn't 4G either. Only LTE-Advanced meets the original definition of 4G. And honestly the early implementations of LTE weren't any

Eh, original LTE technically wasn't 4G either. Only LTE-Advanced meets the original definition of 4G. And honestly the early implementations of LTE weren't any faster than HSPA+ either in real-world speeds. And I have to say "original definition", because the ITU eventually threw up its hands and said "fine, whatever y'all are calling 4G is 4G now!"

sp332 9y ago
Didn't they fail to get a trademark or something? I think they would only license the "3G" label to services that met their standards, but they couldn't enforce anything for 4G.
- amyjess 9y ago
  Yeah, the ITU never owned the 4G name. In technical circles, 4G was used as a synonym for the IMT-Advanced spec, but that was just common courtesy. And then post-HSPA technologies like HSPA+, Mobile WiMAX, and LTE showed up, and every carrier that implemented them called them 4G, and the ITU couldn't do anything. Eventually they published a nothingburger of a press release saying that they don't care anymore and as far as they're concerned, anything the carriers are calling 4G is 4G.
r00fus 9y ago
Ok, I'm not sure what it is, but when I got my first LTE device (iPhone5) it was so much faster than my 4S that I simply couldn't believe it. Of course, I had recently switched from ATT to Tmobile, so I'm not sure whether AT&T's HSPA+ was on paper speed equivalent to TMobile's LTE, but the difference in experience was amazing (it could also have been the fact that TMO had planned additional capacity before everyone joined - AT&T was crowded/oversubscribed for sure - or maybe the iPhone4S modem was just slower in general than the iPhone5).
- amyjess 9y ago
  AT&T's HSPA+ was pretty bad, even in comparison to T-Mobile's HSPA+. Even if you were in a place that got no LTE signal, you'd get better performance on T-Mobile than AT&T. AT&T was stuck on 21 Mbps vanilla HSPA+, while T-Mobile rolled out 42 Mbps DC-HSPA+ in 2011 (with a surprise midnight announcement that they'd already converted a huge chunk of their network and just turned it on). DC-HSPA+ had real-world performance better than or equal to AT&T and Verizon's LTE networks at the time, which were allegedly 100 Mbps but didn't perform like it, so I honestly don't blame T-Mobile for marketing it as being equal to Verizon's network. For context, this was back when AT&T was trying to buy T-Mobile, and the reason why T-Mobile was enthusiastic about it was because they were out of spectrum and didn't have any room to roll out LTE. So instead they went all-out in making their HSPA+ network as fantastic as possible until they could get bought by somebody with spectrum (i.e. AT&T). Rolling out DC-HSPA+ ahead of schedule was just the start; they had plans to follow that up with MIMO bringing speeds up to 84 Mbps. But then government interference caused the deal to fall through, which triggered a trap clause that forced AT&T to cede a decent chunk of spectrum to T-Mobile, so they scrapped their MIMO plans and rolled out LTE on their newly-acquired spectrum. And they very much had an incentive to make their LTE network fantastic, because they needed it to perform better than their DC-HSPA+ network to be worth it for people to buy new phones. Being newer than AT&T's and Verizon's LTE networks (and maybe Sprint's, but I can't remember if Sprint switched to LTE before or after this) probably helped them, as they got to start it out with all-new hardware.
staticfish 9y ago
One thing that people forget: "LTE" stands for "Long-Term Evolution". It was built in to the name that the technology and stack is what we would consider a draft.

sp332 9y ago

Didn't they fail to get a trademark or something? I think they would only license the "3G" label to services that met their standards, but they couldn't enforce anything for 4G.

amyjess 9y ago
Yeah, the ITU never owned the 4G name. In technical circles, 4G was used as a synonym for the IMT-Advanced spec, but that was just common courtesy. And then post-HSPA technologies like HSPA+, Mobile WiMAX, and LTE showed up, and every carrier that implemented them called them 4G, and the ITU couldn't do anything. Eventually they published a nothingburger of a press release saying that they don't care anymore and as far as they're concerned, anything the carriers are calling 4G is 4G.

r00fus 9y ago

Ok, I'm not sure what it is, but when I got my first LTE device (iPhone5) it was so much faster than my 4S that I simply couldn't believe it. Of course, I had recently switched from ATT to Tmobile, so I'm not sure whether AT&T's HSPA+ was on paper speed equivalent to TMobile's LTE, but the difference in experience was amazing (it could also have been the fact that TMO had planned additional capacity before everyone joined - AT&T was crowded/oversubscribed for sure - or maybe the iPhone4S modem was just slower in general than the iPhone5).

amyjess 9y ago
AT&T's HSPA+ was pretty bad, even in comparison to T-Mobile's HSPA+. Even if you were in a place that got no LTE signal, you'd get better performance on T-Mobile than AT&T. AT&T was stuck on 21 Mbps vanilla HSPA+, while T-Mobile rolled out 42 Mbps DC-HSPA+ in 2011 (with a surprise midnight announcement that they'd already converted a huge chunk of their network and just turned it on). DC-HSPA+ had real-world performance better than or equal to AT&T and Verizon's LTE networks at the time, which were allegedly 100 Mbps but didn't perform like it, so I honestly don't blame T-Mobile for marketing it as being equal to Verizon's network. For context, this was back when AT&T was trying to buy T-Mobile, and the reason why T-Mobile was enthusiastic about it was because they were out of spectrum and didn't have any room to roll out LTE. So instead they went all-out in making their HSPA+ network as fantastic as possible until they could get bought by somebody with spectrum (i.e. AT&T). Rolling out DC-HSPA+ ahead of schedule was just the start; they had plans to follow that up with MIMO bringing speeds up to 84 Mbps. But then government interference caused the deal to fall through, which triggered a trap clause that forced AT&T to cede a decent chunk of spectrum to T-Mobile, so they scrapped their MIMO plans and rolled out LTE on their newly-acquired spectrum. And they very much had an incentive to make their LTE network fantastic, because they needed it to perform better than their DC-HSPA+ network to be worth it for people to buy new phones. Being newer than AT&T's and Verizon's LTE networks (and maybe Sprint's, but I can't remember if Sprint switched to LTE before or after this) probably helped them, as they got to start it out with all-new hardware.

staticfish 9y ago

One thing that people forget: "LTE" stands for "Long-Term Evolution". It was built in to the name that the technology and stack is what we would consider a draft.