Hacker News Reader

Comment by imglorp | Hacker News Reader

The marketers did this for 5G also, calling their product 5G before it was actually deployed, only because theirs came after 4G but wanted to ride the upcoming 5G buzz.

It seems marketing /depends/ on conflating terms and misleading consumers. Shakespeare might have gotten it wrong with his quip about lawyers.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/att-to-drop-misleading-...

View on HN

There was soooo much intentional disinformation around 5G. Everyone who wanted to sell anything intentionally confused the >1Gbps millimeter wave line-of-sight kind of 5G with the "4G but with some changes to handle more devices connected to one tower" kind of 5G. I wonder how many bought a "5G phone" expecting millimeter wave but only got the slightly improved 4G.

This is mostly the standard’s fault, right? Putting more conventional wavelengths and the mm stuff together in one standard was… a choice.

From a standards design perspective, there is nothing wrong with it. It's the same protocol running on two very different frequency bands. They co-exist and support each other.

The problem is how marketing interacted with it.

They should share a specification (I know this is correctly called a 'standard') but the should have been a separate logo for each non-interoperable group of useful features (a different concept also often called a 'standard'); as USB has proved.

Wait til you search the term “6g”.

Bill Hicks had some thoughts, too:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GaD8y-CGhMw

It’s been a long long time since I’ve heard that name come up in conversation.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Yes, my wireless router has "5G WiFi" but only does 4G. I didn't have a choice about using it since it comes from the provider, but still stupid.

What is 5G WiFi? Do you mean 5Ghz WiFi?

It's nothing. It's just made up deceptive marketing terms. That's my point.

5G and 4G are not terms applied to WiFi. We have 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax and WiFi6/7

WiFi operates in the 2.4, 5, 6GHz bands, but those frequency bands are not used to differentiate WiFi standards because you can mix and match WiFi 6/7 on all three bands.

There are also more WiFi bands below 2.4 and above 6GHz, but they're not common worldwide.

> 5G and 4G are not terms applied to WiFi.

Tell that to Netgear, AT&T and several other Wifi hub manufacturers.

The default SSIDs on many hubs are names like “NETGEAR23” and NETGEAR23-5G”.

I know that, but you misunderstand. This is a 4G model and WiFi router in one. The company that made it is pretending there's something called "5G WiFi" though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com