AT&T also did that with the 4G rollout – my iPhone 4S, which lacked 4G hardware, would display 4G in the status bar, which was especially cruel since they had a huge capacity problem and the average speeds were in the double-digit Kbps range.
I remember that. HSPA+, which was just fast 3G. It was an improvement from what I remember, but the first time I tasted LTE, I felt ripped off.
Yes - definitely more bandwidth, although IIRC the hardware on my 4S didn’t get full advantage, but the latency and time to reestablish a session were so much worse.