ITU chief says all claims of '4G' wireless are baloney

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 08 June 2011 10:02

Business IT - Technology

The head of the ITU has stated categorically that every vendor and operator using the term '4G' for current wireless technologies is in error.

ITU secretary general, Hamadoun Touré, told news service Total Telecom that none of the technologies currently on offer comply with the ITU's fourth-generation mobile standard. He explained, as the ITU has repeatedly insisted: "4G is the commercial term applied to the [ITU's] IMT-Advanced standard, which is currently met by LTE-Advanced and WiMAX-Advanced [technologies]."

iTWire has on several occasions taken this stance, initially as far back as 2007. In September 2010 we reported on 3G Americas making statements similar to those of Touré, and later reported ratification by ITU of the standards mentioned by Touré as the first 4G technologies.

Then, in December2010 the ITU issued a statement saying "As the most advanced technologies currently defined for global wireless mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as '4G', although it is recognised that this term, while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMax, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed."

To this writer, the statement appeared to be simply an acknowledgement by the ITU of market reality: the term 4G was being used for what it considered 3G technologies, but there was nothing it could do about this. Several commentators, however, accused the ITU of changing its rules and widening its definition of 4G in response to market pressures.

Touré, however, was adamant that this was not the case. He told Total Telecom "No one can prevent them from calling [the technologies currently on offer] '4G'. But they know deep down inside whether or not they are meeting the ITU standard."

And Touré probably knows deep down inside that neither his comments nor anything else the ITU might have to say on the subject will make any difference whatsoever.