AT&T Pins 4G Label to Existing Network | Hacker News Reader

AT&T Pins 4G Label to Existing Network

online.wsj.com

60 pointstewks39 comments

This is the result of a series of steps that each seemed somewhat reasonable — like a marketing version of path dependence (or maybe ratcheting). Clearwire called WiMax 4G because it's an incompatible, more advanced, and dramatically faster protocol than EV-DO or WCDMA. Then T-Mobile introduced HSPA+ which is technically an incremental evolution of 3G but is actually faster than WiMax; thinking that it's unfair for a faster network to have fewer Gs, they called it 4G. Now AT&T will be penalized if they call their HSPA+ 3G, so they also call it 4G.

Honestly, the traditional G naming scheme was too arbitrary and confused users.

It's also worth noting that the ITU (closest thing to an authority on this) announced that "4G" has no technical meaning and therefore might as well apply to T-Mobile's HSPA+ network. I'm sure AT&T was pissed.

(Only LTE and WiMAX can use the ITU label "IMT-Advanced" but that term is lacking a certain bit of marketing cachet)

http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2010/48.as...

They should have just pulled a Gillette and gone straight to 5G:

http://boingboing.net/2005/09/14/gillettes-5blade-raz.html

I agree, I can't help but thinking how awesome it would be just to see the press release: "Fuck it, we're doing 5Gs."

Its already in the works though (release 2020) speeds faster than 1Gbps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G).

Originally the ITU ruled that neither WiMax or LTE were 4G in October: http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/4g-defined-wimax-and-lte...

Which meant neither Sprint's or Verizon's network were 4G, but that didn't stop them from advertising.

In December, the ITU changed their mind and now WiMax, LTE, and HSPA+ can be called 4G: http://www.intomobile.com/2010/12/18/itu-reverses-its-decisi...

At this point, I think 4G is just mostly a marketing phrase now.

T-Mobile seems to have gotten away with it, so it was probably just a matter of time. 4G is just much catchier that HSPA+.

Coming soon: LTE aka 5G.

He says consumers generally won't notice the difference in speed between AT&T's HSPA-plus and upcoming LTE networks, so it makes sense to call both 4G ...the carrier will speed up the LTE network build out in 2012 and 2013.

basically, they got the ceo of ATT wireless to say on-record that there would be no speed improvements on their network for a very long time... They probably won't have good (geographic) coverage on the new network for at least 2-3 years...

Can anyone comment on why they are just starting to build a network with tech that isn't higher speed than their current network? I'm sure that's a lot of money spent, and you'd think that if they went to the trouble they'd deploy something that was faster.

From what I've read, LTE will certainly be faster than HSPA+. I think what he is saying is that HSPA+ is "fast enough" for most smartphone activities (such as web browsing), so the speed boost provided by LTE will only be noticed in more data-intensive applications, such as video streaming.

The fastest implementations of HSPA-plus are actually coming close to the theoretical limits of how much data can be transferred on a given frequency band, but they have some big drawbacks compared to LTE.

The one that will be most noticeable at first is latency, which is at most half that of HSPA (the requirement is 20ms for LTE). The second is that LTE will be able to use bigger frequency bands than HSPA, eventually reaching a 100 MHz band.

Even ignoring that, AT&T's current HSPA-plus network is nowhere near as fast as HSPA-plus can be. They would need to upgrade it to get close to the raw speed of LTE.

Seems that "4G" is the new "2.0"

or HTML5

The term "HTML5" is not nearly as vague. It's less exclusive than some purists would prefer (because it's used as a general term for corresponding changes to markup, CSS, the recommended parsing algorithm and the DOM), but it's not like "HTML5" could suddenly refer to Flash tomorrow.

That's pretty ambitious of them considering I don't even have 3G service from ATT in my area. I'm still stuck on the Edge.

They rebranded their existing HSPA+ network as 4G; they're not dumb enough to try to pass off EDGE as 4G.

Now Walt Mossberg and John Gruber can praise Apple for making a 4G iPhone. That sure was easy.

Lying isn't right, so I tell my children. I am sure consumers don't really understand the technology, but clearly stating something you don't have is material the FTC should be investigating.

In a persuasive setting words are currency. Gresham's Law (bad currency drives out good) applies. Since the words in question are actually numbers we get slapped in the face with it this time. Or we get a chuckle, depending on your prior level of cynicism.

Hey AT&T, why don't you forget 4G for now and concentrate on making Edge and 3G work first.

This is a remarkably poorly written article.

I can see highlighting AT&T's change in marketing and seemingly trying to confuse customers by dropping mention of 3G. However, I don't see any evidence here that AT&T is starting to use the term "4G" incorrectly. The article papers over this inconvenient lack of perfidy on AT&T's part by using the term 4G on average once per paragraph.

Is this the WSJ or is it techcrunch?

> However, I don't see any evidence here that AT&T is starting to use the term "4G" incorrectly.

I believe the point of the article was that the term "4G" is currently meaningless, not that it is being used incorrectly.

So we're being sold service that's allegedly next generation, even though nobody actually can agree on what 4G actually is.

I believe the point of the article was to bait people into reading WSJ. The title of the article is "AT&T Pins 4G Label to Existing Network", but that statement is not supported by fact and the claim is not even made in the article. Instead, the writer uses a lot of sound and fury to obscure the fact that ... well AT&T is being more vague about the technology used in their network. Oh no, marketing. It may mean that people who are uninformed will buy products they otherwise might not have, and this is the first time such a thing has ever happened.

If AT&T had actually called their non-LTE network "4G" that would be one thing. But they aren't. This article is below the standards of techcrunch, let alone WSJ.com. Wireless carriers pull enough BS on their own there's no need to go making things up.

This reminds me of when Heroku was acquired... I call it Cloud 2

The only solution is see for Verizon and Sprint is to advertise actual speeds.

The problem with that is, they will be held accountable for delivering those advertised speeds.

In other words, they're upset that AT&T's vacant marketing hype posing as a genuine technical specification is diminishing the value of their own (and better established!) marketing hype posing as a genuine technical specification.

How...frustrating.

In 3G (or 4G, whatever) the speeds are dependent on a lot of things you can't really control: amount of users, location, the 3g device, weather, etc etc. So you can never really promise "with us you'll get at least x megabytes per second!". On the other hand, you could advertise the "maximum speed", which is also meaningless since nobody ever gets that.

and every consumer should multiply those speeds by 0.707

I just...

I, I mean... I...

I can muster nothing but expletives. Wow. Absolutely nothing more than expletives.

Fuck these guys.

Nobody else seems to care about accuracy in labeling things "4G", I don't see why AT&T should.

I'd rather AT&T actually create a better network than spend time on marketing nonsense that simulates the creation of a better network. They may as well have a zero-G network if you live in a half-populated area.

Well you aren't their target customer

Whose target customer are we? It seems that nobody is targeting people who want a dumb, fat, wireless pipe with an unlocked smartphone and no marketing BS.

and I bet you want it at a decent price too.

there's no profit in selling to smart people. Much easier to sell to the suckers.

What's wrong with this?

Their network still sucks? AT&T gets to slap on a new marketing buzzword, pretend it's better, sucker more customers into thinking it's better, and make more money while still giving everyone a crappy service.

They did actually upgrade to HSPA+, it's not like they're deceiving anybody about that. Their claims of the "fastest" network have generally been true too. The fact that their coverage and reliability suck doesn't mean they can't play up their strong points.

I want to see my iPhone status bar to read "AT&T 4G" right now!!! I want my 4g speed, even if it is just a relabeling.

ATT isn't saying that your iPhone is 4G. Your iPhone supports HSPA 7.2. ATT's network is HSPA+ but they don't have any HSPA+ phones yet. HSPA+ is what ATT and T-mobile are calling 4G.

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