All 4G is not created equal,"
Lowell McAdam, Verizon president and chief operating officer, said Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The result: Users, who genuinely want a faster smartphone experience, are left awash in acronyms as they weigh a phone upgrade or carrier switch.
"The industry uses a lot of technology-based definitions that don't mean much to consumers," said Don Kellogg, senior manager of telecommunications research and insights for Nielsen, who recently studied consumer confusion over the term 4G. "People want to know how is this going to benefit them."
Different standards
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T-Mobile uses a wireless standard called HSPA+, which the company is advertising as 4G.
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Verizon Wireless is using a technology called Long-Term Evolution, widely seen as the faster standard, to deliver its 4G network.
— T-Mobile said Thursday that it would be able to double the speed of its HSPA+ network this year through software enhancements.
— AT&T confuses things even more, by deciding to start this year with an HSPA+ roll-out before eventually upgrading to an LTE standard similar to Verizon's by year end. They'll call the network 4G the whole way through.
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Sprint uses another standard yet for its 4G network called WiMax.
To complicate things even further, if you were to follow the initial 4G standard set by the
International Telecommunication Union, none of these networks would be worthy of the 4G moniker.
