I saw an interesting article on MSN this morning about 4G speeds and the fact that the branding of 4G speeds are simply not true. I wanted to weigh in on this topic as I had a very interesting conversation with an ATT technician recently working on a WAN installation for a client. This particular ATT technician had recently been working on upgrading ATT cell phone towers by installing additional T1 lines to the tower to increase the backend bandwidth to support existing 3G speeds for customers, etc. He noted the recent mudslinging match between ATT and Verizon and how Verizon has been touting the fact that they have 4G coverage to customers and ATT still hasn’t made 3G available to everyone. The ATT technician was laughing because of the fact that he indicated that the Verizon cell phone towers were fed by ATT T1 lines! He also indicated that the Verizon towers may be uplinking their customers at 4G speeds to the towers but in many cases from what he has seen and even hooked up it certainly can’t support the true 4G standard and maybe not even 3G.
What we don’t see in the news and hyped up TV ads is certainly true. ATT installed, owns, provisions, and so on just about all the underground telecom infrastructure so many of your major cell phone providers simply are running on the backend ATT infrastructure. The 4G standard and I am sure others that we will be bombarded with via the media and television ads is simply a marketing scheme that the cell phone companies use to get your business.
Take a look at the MSN article discussing the 4G wireless standard and the hyped up myths involved with the marketing from the major players:
https://money.cnn.com/2010/12/01/technology/4g_myth/index.htm?cnn=yes&hpt=C2
