What US Carriers Mean by ‘4G’

With all the wireless industry jargon being thrown around in marketing campaigns these days, it’s still unclear just what each carrier means when it touts its network as “4G.”

Loosely defined, 4G stands for the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. In the narrow terms originally defined by International Telecommunication Union standards, it doesn't count as 4G unless it offers download speeds of 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps. That’s about 100 times faster than any speeds we’re seeing on networks now. If we were to judge the networks available to us now by this standard, none of them would be considered 4G. Luckily for the carriers, we aren't judging that way — at least, not anymore. In December at the ITU World Radiocommunication Seminar in Geneva, the ITU allowed the term “4G” to “also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMax, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement” compared to current 3G networks. AT&T wasted no time embracing the new nomenclature, relabeling its network overnight. And well it might, as rival T-Mobile has been using the same nomenclature for the same technology since early 2010.