T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network claims America’s largest 4G network. 4G? what 4G?

T-Mobile USA has announced its HSPA+ rollout to more metro areas and boldly claims America’s Largest 4G network. To mark that announcement, they are also offering nationwide availability of T-Mobile’s myTouch 4G phone and Dell Inspiron Mini 10 4G netbook tomorrow.

We’ve mentioned several weeks back that ITU announced the technical definition of 4G standards specifically mentioning as LTE Advanced or WiMAX 2 — technologies that are not commercially available right now — as the 4G standard.

Technical definitions aside, we have LTE, WiMAX and now HSPA+ players shouting claiming their network as 4G in the US and in Malaysia. Most of these operators are calling their next-generation networks as 4G to point out superior performance over today’s 3G networks.

So what is 4G? Some people are kicking a big fuss over misleading or false advertising after ITU’s recent announcement. But what does it matter to consumers? Even the Malaysian Government considers LTE as 4G.

4G to consumers is something that offers superior speeds than 3G.  T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network currently boast speeds up to 21Mbps with average speeds of 5Mbps on a T-Mobile 4G phone which is pretty impressive. They even have plans to boost this up to 42Mbps by 2011 which is what U Mobile had announced but have yet to offer to public.

Like some had mentioned, nobody is going to look into the alphabet soup of 4G definition and cry foul over what is being offered now. The Joe Public on the street wouldn’t care and couldn;t care less. WHat matters to them is if they are on 4G, the performance had better be better than 3G.

What matters most we believe is what each “4G” operator promises to deliver to its customers. In Malaysia, our “4G” WiMAX operators have yet to really deliver WiMAX’s full potential. So called 4G operators in Malaysia have generally been with unimpressive delivering inconsistent performance speeds coupled with questionable reliability.

Overall we feel that “4G” in Malaysia doesn’t cut the mustard. We don’t mind an operator claiming it is operating on a 4G network even if it doesn’t technically fit the ITU definition, nobody is going to kill them for that. But what is important is that claim is backed up with true 4G performance. Performance that is trully a marked improvement over 3G networks. But sadly we haven’t experienced such a network in Malaysia.

So what is 4G to you? Leave us your comments.

Don’t forget to check out T-Mobile’s 4G advertisement after the jump. Doesn’t it reminds you of old Mac ads?

[ SOURCE ]