LTE-Advanced, 802.16m make ITU cut for 4G

The International Telecommunications Union narrowed down the requirements for technologies looking to gain official “4G” status claiming that LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced will be accorded the official title of IMT-Advanced. LTE-Advanced is set to be an evolution of the current LTE technology being deployed by network operators, while WirelessMAN-Advanced is the 802.16m version of the current 802.16e-based version of the WiMAX standard currently in deployment.
The ITU noted in its report that both technologies had met all the criteria established by the ITU-R Working Party 5D for the first release of the IMT-Advanced standard. While the final IMT-Advanced standards for performance are expected to be ratified next month, it’s believed they will include downlink speeds of 100 megabits per second in a mobile environment, 1 gigabit per second in “low-mobility” environments, latency of less than 10 milliseconds, and the ability to support spectrum bands up to 100 megahertz.
Those expected standards would preclude any of the currently being deploying WiMAX-based or LTE-based networks from garnering a true 4G designation, though that is not likely to stop marketing efforts from making the claim.