AT&T to Start Using Fake 5G Indicator on LTE Phones

Megalith

Megalith

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Android Police reported last year that AT&T would be the first carrier to say it has a 5G network, but the site called it “complete bullsh*t,” as it was merely 4G LTE features (4x4 MIMO, advanced carrier aggregation, and 256 QAM) under an upgraded name. The telecommunications giant is now doubling down on their “marketing nonsense” and potentially confusing users by swapping their phone’s 4G indicators out with “5G E” (“5G Evolution”) ones.

AT&T announced a raft of 4G LTE features like 4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM earlier this year to speed up its network in select markets. That's all well and good, but it chose to call the enhanced 4G experience "5G Evolution," which is patently ridiculous. This is marketing nonsense, but most consumers probably didn't encounter it much. They will soon—AT&T phones will start showing a "5G E" icon in the coming months.
 
Don't we already have fake 4g? When I changed my iphone from VZW to tmobile it often says 4g, or AT&T 4g, I can have a full signal and its totally useless, like won't load a page useless. Its whatever VZW was calling 3g or maybe even 2g labled as 4g. (HSPA+?)
 
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vegeta535 said:
Isn't that just asking for a class action lawsuit?
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"5G E" is their own made up designation. Hard to sue them for that. 5G isn't trademarked, that I know of, so it's not an infringing on a name.

Total crap move meant to deceive people, but even if they get sued and have to pay a 5,000 fine 10 years from now, they dont give a $&@% cause the execs got their 25 million dollar bonus this year.
 
i bet this update won't come to my windows phone. That would require somebody to develop for it and we all know that won't ever happen.
 
lightsout said:
Don't we already have fake 4g? When I changed my iphone from VZW to tmobile it often says 4g, or AT&T 4g, I can have a full signal and its totally useless, like won't load a page useless. Its whatever VZW was calling 3g or maybe even 2g labled as 4g. (HSPA+?)
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Exact same here. I'm getting DL speeds <0.4mbs while it shows me with 4 bars LTE. A network monitor ap however shows a connection strength of 1. At least Verizon gives me 3dn 1 up while on two bars.
 
I mean honestly we don't even have real full feature 4G in this country..is anyone Actually fucking surprised? This is nothing more than the company saying "Fuck it, not like you have a real choice anyhow".
 
We seem to suddenly live in a culture where people don't care if they are lied to anymore. There's even a study on political lies confirming this.

I think businesses know this and take advantage of this. The phrase "caught in a lie" means nothing.
 
I used to have a friend that had a 300 baud modem and ran a BBS. On his home screen, it said it was 2400 baud. He told me a lot of people believed he had a faster modem.
I lost track of this guy over time. I wonder if he is working for AT&T's marketing department now...hmm...
 
Sadly I remember when 4g came out. They switched our tower to say "4g" but it was more Edge speeds. I even confirmed it with a CS Rep while discussing another issue.
 
Not first time AT&T has pulled this kinda crap, they used to pass off 3g HSPA+ as 4g if some people remember that. They would claim "we have fast 4g network" but really "3g + speed boosting". So this kinda false advertising isn't anything new for them.
 
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Didn't they do that in the past too with HSDPA and HSPA being marketed as 4G at the time?
 
Dekoth-E- said:
I mean honestly we don't even have real full feature 4G in this country..is anyone Actually fucking surprised? This is nothing more than the company saying "Fuck it, not like you have a real choice anyhow".
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How do we not have full featured 4G? They didn't call it Long Term Evolution (LTE) for nothing. It is as full featured as it needs to be and it works fine. 5G with millimeter wavelength bands will be problematic as your hand can stop those RF waves from even reaching your phone antenna if they don't have antennas located where you don't typically hold your phone.
 
Agent_N said:
How do we not have full featured 4G? They didn't call it Long Term Evolution (LTE) for nothing. It is as full featured as it needs to be and it works fine. 5G with millimeter wavelength bands will be problematic as your hand can stop those RF waves from even reaching your phone antenna if they don't have antennas located where you don't typically hold your phone.
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Does your 4g phone Hit even remotely close to gigabit downloads and 500mb upload speeds? No? Didn't think so. We don't have 4G. We have a heavily neutered version that the oligopies determined are "fast enough" for what they charge us.
 
I find it amusing how they can get away from calling something that it isn't 4g 3g is not speed it's generation

Ok they had shown it as 4g+ (ok LTE+ or LTE e , as your fake 4g is used for dc-hspa 3g) that would of been fine

Apple found out the hard way that fake 4g does not fly in Australia

selling there real 4g (LTE) ipads that did not support Australia 4g Bands still sold it as supporting 4g and showing dc-hspa+ as fake 4g icon (as that's what they do in usa)
 
I'm so sick of companies marketing bullshit. Why are they all led by scum-bags?
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Does your 4g phone Hit even remotely close to gigabit downloads and 500mb upload speeds? No? Didn't think so. We don't have 4G. We have a heavily neutered version that the oligopies determined are "fast enough" for what they charge us.
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First of all, you don't have any idea how cellular RF works as your comment smacks of lack of understanding. We do not have a neutered system and yet my phone could hit nearly 1Gbps if I had unrestricted bandwidth and carrier aggregation on all AT&T frequencies (700 B/C, 700 D/E, 850, 1900, 2100, 2300Mhz), which I could get if call testing for AT&T at a new site with no radios available for commercial service, meaning I had the whole cell site to myself. Most users get throttled so that everyone gets some of the bandwidth or you get burst transmits to your phone. You got to share the 1Gbps with everyone else who is actively using bandwidth on that sector at that tower site.

I work in the cell industry, you don't, and it shows in your comment/opinion.
 
likeman said:
I find it amusing how they can get away from calling something that it isn't 4g 3g is not speed it's generation

Ok they had shown it as 4g+ (ok LTE+ or LTE e , as your fake 4g is used for dc-hspa 3g) that would of been fine

Apple found out the hard way that fake 4g does not fly in Australia

selling there real 4g (LTE) ipads that did not support Australia 4g Bands still sold it as supporting 4g and showing dc-hspa+ as fake 4g icon (as that's what they do in usa)
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AT&T called their HSPA+ "4G", which is accurate to a point if using 3G/4G etc as speed bin designators. "4G LTE" is not HSPA+ and therefore different that "4G" that AT&T marketed.
 
Vega said:
I'm so sick of companies marketing bullshit. Why are they all led by scum-bags?
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It's generally about showing positive financial growth to shareholders. Publicly traded companies are basically always going to be the worst examples of greed. More specifically, AT&T is the epitome of an "evil and souless corporation."
 
Agent_N said:
First of all, you don't have any idea how cellular RF works as your comment smacks of lack of understanding. We do not have a neutered system and yet my phone could hit nearly 1Gbps if I had unrestricted bandwidth and carrier aggregation on all AT&T frequencies (700 B/C, 700 D/E, 850, 1900, 2100, 2300Mhz), which I could get if call testing for AT&T at a new site with no radios available for commercial service, meaning I had the whole cell site to myself. Most users get throttled so that everyone gets some of the bandwidth or you get burst transmits to your phone. You got to share the 1Gbps with everyone else who is actively using bandwidth on that sector at that tower site.

I work in the cell industry, you don't, and it shows in your comment/opinion.
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A single device on a single tower isn't a use case that will ever exist in the real world. So it is either flagrantly false marketing or we aren't getting a full deployment. Now given countries like Japan have far higher population density and somehow their devices manage to achieve those speeds on a per device basis, not a per tower basis as your post implies, I'm going with what we have is bullshit.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
A single device on a single tower isn't a use case that will ever exist in the real world. So it is either flagrantly false marketing or we aren't getting a full deployment. Now given countries like Japan have far higher population density and somehow their devices manage to achieve those speeds on a per device basis, not a per tower basis as your post implies, I'm going with what we have is bullshit.
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You got some hard data to back up that claim? How do you know they don't use Wi-Fi to supplement as carriers are starting to do in high density areas in the US? Besides, Japan probably doesn't have 4 cell operators that have to SHARE (do you know the meaning of this word?) bandwidth that the FCC has allocated for cellular use? They probably do get higher bandwidth rates if they have only 2-3 major cell operators operating in Japan. They also have a tiny island compared to the United States.

You are simply acting as a whiny know-it-all that doesn't want to admit you are wrong, misinformed and misunderstand cell industry. The US does not have a neutered 4G LTE system, period.
 
Agent_N said:
AT&T called their HSPA+ "4G", which is accurate to a point if using 3G/4G etc as speed bin designators. "4G LTE" is not HSPA+ and therefore different that "4G" that AT&T marketed.
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Dc-hspa+ (H+ or dc-h) is not 4g (LTE) as like (5g e) is not 5g its 4g+ (or LTE+)

do this any where els in the world leads into massive fines for misleading people

apple tried it in Australia when they brought a non 4G supported ipad device to Australia and was calling 3G dc-hspa+ with a 4G icon when it lacked supported real 4g Bands, as that's why they now call it cellular not 4G any more so they can sell unsupported 4g apple devices in other counters
 
Dekoth-E- said:
A single device on a single tower isn't a use case that will ever exist in the real world. So it is either flagrantly false marketing or we aren't getting a full deployment. Now given countries like Japan have far higher population density and somehow their devices manage to achieve those speeds on a per device basis, not a per tower basis as your post implies, I'm going with what we have is bullshit.
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The speed available is a per mast basis you should not expect 1 to 10 gigabit speeds on a single device the bandwidth is available for all using that cell

real 5g as I have to say real 5g as USA mobile operators like to convert the g into S without removing the G (generation to speed) will make close site speeds quite fast (not that I will have a phone that will support it for another 2-4 years) does mean they need more micro cells as high frequency 5g has less then 100-500m line of sight range,

but generally you will be placing these micro masts in high dense areas like train stations football stadiums other large events where mass amount of people are as there are some train stations in the UK where I am even 4G barely works due to so many using the data at once 5g has so much available this should cure that problem (once people have supported phones witch is like 2-5 years from Now)
 
likeman said:
Dc-hspa+ (H+ or dc-h) is not 4g (LTE) as like (5g e) is not 5g its 4g+ (or LTE+)

do this any where els in the world leads into massive fines for misleading people

apple tried it in Australia when they brought a non 4G supported ipad device to Australia and was calling 3G dc-hspa+ with a 4G icon when it lacked supported real 4g Bands, as that's why they now call it cellular not 4G any more so they can sell unsupported 4g apple devices in other counters
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I didn’t call HSPA+ “4G LTE”. I said if you are using 3G and 4G as a data bandwidth metric then HSPA+ could qualify as “4G”, which is what AT&T was trying to fool people with their marketing, but 4G LTE uses different protocol for transmitting data than HSPA+, therefore the two are not the same.

5G e is AT&T trying to do the same thing it did with HSPA+, they are using the data bandwidth to sort of qualify their 5 carrier 4G LTE as 5G.

Furthermore, AT&T has finally, 8 years later, with multiple carrier frequencies plus aggregation of those frequencies, actualized the 1 Gbps that 4G LTE promises to provide.
 
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