Worst of the Week: Lies, white lies and LTE

Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
Parenting is hard work. I mean if anyone had told me that potty training is actually one of the easier aspects of the job, I might have reconsidered my decision to bring two children into the world. Now it’s the holidays and a certain teen in the Ford household wants a $100 pair of jeans for Christmas – along with several other pricey gifts. Evidently, every other kid at high school does have a pair of jeans from Buckle. Who knew? What kind of message does that send? Yes, money does make you popular? Yes, we have bought into the consumerism? I’m stumped.
My sister told me years ago that kids are just door-checkers. Some doors are locked and it’s the parents’ responsibility to keep them locked because the kids will keep turning the handle to see if they are really locked. It’s a nice way of saying that begging works. And for a mom who was never going to have toy guns in the house, and now has air guns, Nerf guns, lasers, etc., let me say I don’t judge too harshly. At some point you just give up and give in.
So while I am not pointing fingers (OK, I am), let me just say that the International Telecommunications Union earlier this week said basically that it was tired of its children and anyone who wanted to call its network 4G could. Despite the fact that there is no definition for 4G. Now there is 4G. Even if it’s 3G.
“As the most advanced technologies currently defined for global wireless mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as ‘4G’, although it is recognized 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.”
So WiMAX and LTE are now 4G because they have been saying they were and if you say it long enough it must be true. So in the spirit of good marketing vs. good science, what other white lies should we all nod, wink and agree to? I propose these:
— That FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, after proposing a third way to say that the FCC could have authority to regulate broadband providers, does have the authority to regulate the Internet. Even though it didn’t before. Even though a federal appeals court said it didn’t. This year.
— Likewise, a federal appeals court said that the FCC shouldn’t have changed rules regarding designated entities in a 2008 spectrum auction, and that severe damage probably was done to DEs bidding in the auction. But even though mistakes were made, and companies that sued were vindicated in court, spending untold countless dollars on legal fees, it was OK to let the auction results stand. Because that’s why you go to court. For moral vindication, not for monetary gain or to change the results when you’ve been wronged.
— That is was a good idea for Verizon Wireless to pass on the iPhone when it was first offered because VZW was concerned its “brand” would be overshadowed by Apple.
— That the iPhone doesn’t drop as many calls as it connects.
— That Clearwire’s time-to-market advantage made WiMAX the right technology choice at the right time.
— That AT&T is not nervous about losing iPhone exclusivity?
— That T-Mobile USA Inc. is not just competing on price?
— That the wireless industry is not just a few buys shy of being a duopoly.
— That $100 jeans and Halo don’t teach children the wrong lessons about consumerism and violence.
There I feel better already.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras courtesy of our RCRBlog at :
—(From Dan Meyer)
Well, I guess all the complaining I have been doing over the whole “4G” issue has been almost for naught. It seems the International Telecommunications Union, also known as the people who to this point decided what was and was not a “G,” has inserted a loophole in the classification of what 4G is by recently stating:
“Following a detailed evaluation against stringent technical and operational criteria, ITU has determined that “LTE-Advanced” and “WirelessMAN-Advanced” should be accorded the official designation of IMT-Advanced. As the most advanced technologies currently defined for global wireless mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as “4G,” although it is recognized 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.”
For those of you with enough of life to not actually make it through all of that statement, what the ITU basically said was that while it has defined what 4G will look like, those technologies that provide superior performance to what was seen as standard 3G can also call themselves 4G. In other words, all of those carriers that are now calling their not officially recognized 4G technologies 4G can continue to do so even though they really aren’t.
Clear?
The best part of the statement is where they use the words “substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities” without going so far as to define what “substantial” is. This is the loophole that will allow basically anyone to call their technology 4G if it provides an undefined “improvement” over what is officially defined as a 3G standard.
The ITU in 2003 noted in a report that 3G technology provided “a minimum speed of 2 [megabits per second] for stationary or walking users, and 348 [kilobits per second] in a moving vehicle.”
So, that would mean that 4G could be any technology that provided a minimum speed of 2.00000001 Mbps for stationary or walking users and 348.0000000001 Kbps in a moving vehicle.
This despite the fact that a few years ago the ITU said this:
“One of the drivers for the popular use of 4G has been the aggressive promotion within the industry of the IEEE 802.16e (WiMAX) mobile standard. A version of this standard was, however, recently accepted by the ITU as an addition to the IMT-2000 family and therefore is clearly to be considered together with the other 3G IMT-2000 technologies.”
(This is not to pick on WiMAX, as this statement was released before the current LTE standard was around.)
Are we still clear?
Have we all forgotten all the hubbub years ago over whether to call CDMA2000 1x or EDGE 3G technologies? Everyone on both sides of that fight were adamant that the opposing technology did not conform to the 3G standard because it was a few kilobits per second slower in a stationary or mobile environment then what the standards called for. Those arguments were right of course and thus those technologies for the most part continued to be labeled with the 2G, or even worse, 2.5G/2.75G tags.
So, here we are again. But this time the current versions of WiMAX, HSPA+ and LTE are tens of megabits per second slower than what the ITU has in mind for 4G, yet due to industry pressure, the body has provided this loophole to allow for some “official” fudging of the numbers.
Does this all sound like perhaps I am a bit too much of a stickler for standards? Don’t answer that. All I know is that I will have to do some serious soul searching to regain some clarity on this whole issue.
Still clear? Not really.
(From me)
So it’s bad enough that parents are gr
owing broke a few bucks at a time buying their kids Silly Bandz, annoyingly thin v
ersions of rubber bands shaped like everything from puppies to fire hydrants. Now parents will have to buy new Silly Bandz game for the iPhone and iTouch at 99 cents, and a whopping $1.99 if kids want to play the game on the iPad. (I guess that’s cheap compared to the $30 parents have to pay to let their kids play the game on a Nintendo DS. Sigh.)
Silly Bandz, which are a menace to vacuum cleaners everywhere, are the newest Pet Rock/Beanie Babies/Garbage Pail Kids got-to-have item for today’s playground set. An entrepreneur.com story said Silly Bandz will generate $200 million in revenue this year. Sigh.
“Blending the fun and colorful elastic world of the Silly Bandz bracelets with the addictive physics-based catapult gameplay mechanic beloved by players was a natural fit for Silly Bandz on iOS,” said Mark Seremet, CEO of Zoo Entertainment Inc. “Fans of Silly Bandz are sure to enjoy bringing the world that they usually wear on their wrists to life in this game, while those that might not yet consider themselves afflicted with bracelet fever may be secretly surprised at how much fun they have collecting Silly Bandz on their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.”
Since when are “addictive” and “afflicted” good words associated with kids? At what point is the Federal Communications Commission or Federal Trade Commission or American Pediatric Association going to start monitoring apps like they do TV commercials and toys with lead-based paint? I think I’ll e-mail a letter to someone expressing my outrage. Right after I rack up another game of Angry Birds.
(From Matt Kapko)
Though the two companies increasingly find themselves competing in the same markets and industries, Google Inc. and Apple Inc. appear to be playing nice on at least one front: iOS applications.
Whereas previously Apple blocked some of the applications submitted by Google, more of those apps are now sailing through to safer landings on users iOS devices. This change not only highlights Google and Apple’s delayed reluctance to see eye to eye for the benefit of their users, but also Google’s continued desire to reach mobile users beyond its Android platform.
In little more than a month, Apple has approved Google Voice, Google Books and Google Latitude. At least two of these apps directly compete with some of Apple’s business models or at least mimic some of the features on iOS devices.
Following Apple’s blockade on Google Voice and Google Latitude, Google built HTML5-based websites that gave users a workaround, but both suffered from a greatly diminished user experience.
These same apps, which Google has revamped to harness some of the latest features in Apple’s iOS, are now being approved. Will Apple lose some business due to these relaxations or does it simply help the company extend loyalty among its users and expand Google’s sphere of influence in the process?