There is a misnomer we should get out of the way: LTE is not 4G. We can look to T-Mobile as an example. They put 4G on everything they can, but make no claim to LTE. The benchmark for 4G is also much higher than what we currently see with LTE. That benchmark of 100Mbit/s is established by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in cooperation with the 3GPP. To give a quick idea of how that measures up to what you have now, 1000kbps is equal to 1Mbit/s. If you ran a benchmark test on your phone and did the math, you’d see that the actual 4G standard is about 5-10 times faster than what you probably see now with “LTE”.
In being fair, both GSM and CDMA have made some impressive improvements prior to any LTE implementation. As GSM relies on moving parcels of information, the HSPA, or high speed packet access, was the natural progression for them. The difference between GSM and CDMA is that GSM moves packets of information while CDMA allows users to “stream” information. Neither is necessarily better, they just operate differently. The CDMA progression gave us CDMA EV-DO, which like HSPA just sped up the entire process instead of changing anything.
Carriers knew they needed a marketing strategy for the system updates, so the ITU agreed to let them market it as 4G. Again, while it doesn’t meet the benchmarks set forth by the ITU and 3GPP, it does represent a huge step forward. Both agencies respect the advancements as significant, so they allowed them to use the moniker.
