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Whatsthedifferencebetween4GandLTE?

WHATS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 4G AND LTE?

ByBradBourque February25,2015

YouTube

When youre looking at buying a new phone, you might nd that there are way too many acronyms to
choose from, between CDMA, GSM, LTE, and WiMax, andthe list goes on. Instead, it can be easier to
focus simply on the dierences in these networks as they apply to you directly. The simplest explanation
is that the G in 4G stands for generation, because 4G is the fourth generation of mobile data
technology, as dened by the radio sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R). LTE
stands for Long Term Evolution and applies more generally to the idea of improving wireless
broadband speeds to meet increasing demand.

What is 3G?
When 3G networks started rolling out, they replaced the 2G system, a network protocol that only
allowed the most basic of what we would now call smartphone functionality. Most 2G networks handled
phone calls, basic text messaging, and small amounts of data over a protocol called MMS. With the
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introduction of 3G connectivity, a number of larger data formats became much more accessible,
including standard HTML pages, videos, and music. The speeds were still pretty slow, and mostly
required pages and data specially formatted for these slower wireless connections. By 2G standards, the
new protocol was speedy, but still didnt come anywhere close to replacing a home broadband
connection.

What is 4G?

Igor Stevanovic

The ITU-R set standards for 4G connectivity in March of 2008,

requiring all services described as 4G to adhere to a set of speed
and connection standards. For mobile use, including smartphones
and tablets, connection speeds need to have a peak of at least 100
megabits per second, and for more stationary uses such as mobile
hotspots, at least 1 gigabit per second.
When these standards were announced, these speeds were
unheard of in the practical world, because they were intended as a

target for technology developers, a point in the future that marked a signicant jump over the current
technology. Over time, the systems that power these networks have caught up, not just in the sense that
new broadcasting methods have found their way into products, but the previously-established 3G
networks have been improved to the point that they can be classied as 4G.

What is LTE?
LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, and isnt as much a technology as it is the path followed to achieve
4G speeds. As it stands, most of the time when your phone displays the 4G symbol in the upper right
corner, it doesnt really mean it. When the ITU-R set the minimum speeds for 4G, they were a bit
unreachable, despite the amount of money tech manufacturers put into achieving them. In response, the
regulating body decided that LTE, the name given to the technology used in pursuit of those
standards,could be labeled as 4G if it provided a substantial improvement over the 3G technology.
Immediately networks began advertising their connections as 4G LTE, a marketing technique that
allowed them to claim next-gen connectivity without having to reach the actual required number rst; it
would be like the U.S. claiming they had landed on the moon because they got pretty close and the
spaceship that got them there was a lot better than the previous ship. Its not entirely trickery
though,despite inconsistent speeds depending on location and network, the dierence between 3G
and 4G is immediately noticeable.

Speed
So the real question is, can you feel a dierence between 4G and LTE networks? Is the speed of loading
a page or downloading an app on your handheld a lot faster if you have LTE technology built in?
Probably not. While the dierence between slower 3G networks and new 4G or LTE networks is certainly
noticeably faster, most of the 4G and true 4G networks have upload and download speeds that are
almost identical. For now, LTE is the fastest connection available for wireless networks.

Required resources
Creating 4G connectivity requires two components: a network that can support the necessary speeds,
and a device that is able to connect to that network and download information at high enough speed.
Just because a phone has 4G LTE connectivity inside doesnt mean you can get the speeds you want, in
the same way that buying a car that can drive 200 MPH doesnt mean you can go that fast on a 55 MPH
freeway.
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Before carriers were able to truly oer LTE speeds in

major areas, they were selling phones that had the
capabilities they would need to reach the desired
speeds, and afterwards started rolling out the service on
a limited scale. Now that LTE service is fairly
widespread, this isnt as much of a problem, but if you
dont live in a major metropolitan area its worth
checking to make sure you actually need LTE service
where you live and work. With the rise in popularity, its
uncommon for a provider to charge less if you arent utilizing the LTE speeds on a regular basis, but you
can save money by picking up an older generation smartphone with only 3G or 4G connectivity.

Packet-switching and circuit-switching

No matter what the data is or how fast its being transferred, it needs to be packaged and sent so that
other points on the network can interpret it. Older networks use circuit-switching technology, a term that
refers to the method of communicating. In a circuit-switching system, a connection is established directly
to the target through the network, and the entirety of the connection, whether its a phone call or a le
transfer, happens through that connection.
The advantages of a circuit-switched network include a faster connection
time, and less chance of the connection dropping. Newer networks take
advantage of packet-switching technology, a modern protocol that takes
advantage of the much larger number of connected points across the
globe. In a packet-switching network, your information is broken up into
small chunks which are then sent to your destination over whatever path
is currently the most ecient. If a node drops out of your connection in
the circuit-switching networks, youll have to reconnect, but in a packetswitching network the next packetwill simply hunt for a dierent path.
A lot of the technology used to create 4G speeds doesnt have anything to do with voice
communication. Because voice networks still use circuit-switching technology, it became necessary to
reconcile the dierence between older and newer network structures. A few dierent methods have
been enacted that deal with the issue, and most carriers chose to deploy one of two options that
preserved their control over the minutes used.
They do this by eitherallowing the phone to fall back to circuit-switching standards when usedto make
or receive a call, or by using packet-switching communication for data and circuit-switching for voice at
the same time. The third option is to simply run the voice audio as data over the new LTE networks, a
method that most companies have avoided, most likely because it takes away their power to easily
charge for voice minutes. Voice over LTE is basically what happens already when you make a Skype call
or a Facetime Audio connection to another user, with higher-resolution audio and faster connection
speeds.

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