The hype is in, but what exactly is the 4G Mobile Technology?
4G is the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards, with its first availability reported in US since 2009. However, there is not yet an agreed industry standard that defines 4G except for the definition by the International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (IMT-Advanced) cellular system, so it is probably just another marketing term.
The 4G is supposed to be a successor to the 2G and 3G families of standards, and it should be an improvement in speed for connections. It is expected to provide a complete and secured all-IP based mobile broadband solution. Its capacity should be better than your regular broadband, giving it the term of ultra-broadband Internet access, with IP telephony and other usage models including gaming and multimedia streaming made easier and faster for users, with connectivity to devices such as smart phones and laptop computers.
Some mobile carriers may have confused the current 3.9G technology as 4G, especially if it refers to the IMT-Advanced with the International telecommunications Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) defined principles for 4G standards. The ITU-R recently identified several broadband service providers technology as officially not 4G, but this does not seem to matter to the average consumer, as long as there is faster mobile broadband speeds available in the market.
What the IMT-Advance cellular system covers as 4G Is the ability to deliver a peak download speed of up to 100Mbps in a high mobility environment (meaning to say with mobile phone access) and up to 1Gbps in a low mobility environment (which is the local wireless access). As such, many providers are not able to meet the requirements to qualify as 4G providers, and here is a list of identified standards for mobile data communications standards and speeds:
- Basic GSM (2G) – 14.4Kbps Download
- GPRS (2G) – 48Kbps Download
- EDGE (2G) – 236Kbps Download
- UMTS (3G / IMT-2000) – 384Kbps Download [64Kbps upstream]
- HSPA (3G / IMT-2000) – 14.4Mbps Download [5.8Mbps upload]
- HSPA+ (3G / IMT-2000) – 42Mbps Download [22Mbps upload]
- WiMAX 802.16e (3G / IMT-2000) – 128Mbps Download [56Mbps upload] – Frequency: 500–800MHz, 2.3GHz, 2.5-2.6GHz, 3.3-3.5GHz
- LTE (3G / IMT-2000) – 100Mbps Download [50Mbps upload] – Frequency: 900MHz, 1800MHz, 2.6GHz
- WiMAX2 802.16m (4G / IMT-Advanced) – 1Gbps Download – Frequency: 2.3GHz, 2.5GHz, 2.6GHz (UK) or 3.5GHz
- LTE-Advanced (4G / IMT-Advanced) – 1Gbps Download – Frequency: 900MHz, 1800MHz, 2.6GHz
(taken from http://www.ispreview.co.uk/broadband_mobile.php)