4 ms·

Fantastic idea. To require carriers to define 4G like "at least X megabits per second transmission speed will be available Y percent of the time, costing Z doll

Fantastic idea. To require carriers to define 4G like "at least X megabits per second transmission speed will be available Y percent of the time, costing Z dollars, with exactly these limits on data volume and this kind of traffic priority scheme." Yes, there is always uncertainty in wireless communication and ISP service, but that's what the "percent of the time" part is for, and the carriers are free to under-promise and over-deliver. What I'm sick of is ISPs and carriers promising "up to" some speed. "Up to" means "guaranteed not more than." How does that make sense? "We guarantee you won't get better speed than X!" That would only make sense if I hated speed. Or if I could pay them "up to $50" a month for service.

ovi256 15y ago
Defining 4G service like that is still a scam, as true 4G would be one of the fourth generation network standards. However, laissez-faire non-regulation from the FCC led to a marketing arms race where US carriers had to advertise 4G service even if they had nothing like it. What they have is LTE = 3GPP Long Term Evolution, which is better 3G, and it's barely getting deployed, and which they just agreed among themselves to call 4G. Not that I'm against better defining consumer TOS, but don't call it 4G. When true 4G gets deployed, prepare for the confusion. This fraudulent 4G marketing could very well have killed investment in true 4G networks from US carriers: "Oh they're deploying 4G ? Big deal I thought all carriers already had that thingamajig." Try to explain this one to Joe Public.
- wmf 15y ago
  I don't think bureaucratic pedantry helps the situation; it's silly to call everything between 384 kbps and 100 Mbps "3G". BTW, "true 4G" will simply be renamed to "5G" and there will be no confusion.
- nradov 15y ago
  Who cares what they call it? As a consumer it doesn't matter whether the service is 2G, 4G, or 99G. What does matter is the user experience (coverage, reliability, performance) and price. Joe Public doesn't know what 4G was originally supposed to mean anyway.
- lallysingh 15y ago
  Drop the acronym BS & call it what it is: another QoS/price option. Start with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service#Key_qualities_of_traffic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service#Key_qualitie... (but swap out-of-order delivery for bitrate) and let the providers get measured. Publish the results. You can actually sell quite a few network services to people, once you start talking about them in real terms. Gaming network links, with better latency guarantees, make a lot of sense. So do high-bandwidth, high-jitter links for downloaders. IMHO it's another case of the marketers completely fucking up the market, because they're too dumb to understand their own product.
deleted 15y ago
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ovi256 15y ago

Defining 4G service like that is still a scam, as true 4G would be one of the fourth generation network standards. However, laissez-faire non-regulation from the FCC led to a marketing arms race where US carriers had to advertise 4G service even if they had nothing like it. What they have is LTE = 3GPP Long Term Evolution, which is better 3G, and it's barely getting deployed, and which they just agreed among themselves to call 4G. Not that I'm against better defining consumer TOS, but don't call it 4G. When true 4G gets deployed, prepare for the confusion. This fraudulent 4G marketing could very well have killed investment in true 4G networks from US carriers: "Oh they're deploying 4G ? Big deal I thought all carriers already had that thingamajig." Try to explain this one to Joe Public.

wmf 15y ago
I don't think bureaucratic pedantry helps the situation; it's silly to call everything between 384 kbps and 100 Mbps "3G". BTW, "true 4G" will simply be renamed to "5G" and there will be no confusion.
nradov 15y ago
Who cares what they call it? As a consumer it doesn't matter whether the service is 2G, 4G, or 99G. What does matter is the user experience (coverage, reliability, performance) and price. Joe Public doesn't know what 4G was originally supposed to mean anyway.
lallysingh 15y ago
Drop the acronym BS & call it what it is: another QoS/price option. Start with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service#Key_qualities_of_traffic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service#Key_qualitie... (but swap out-of-order delivery for bitrate) and let the providers get measured. Publish the results. You can actually sell quite a few network services to people, once you start talking about them in real terms. Gaming network links, with better latency guarantees, make a lot of sense. So do high-bandwidth, high-jitter links for downloaders. IMHO it's another case of the marketers completely fucking up the market, because they're too dumb to understand their own product.

deleted 15y ago

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