ITU Certifies WiMAX 2 and LTE-Advanced as 4G

Submitted by Merben on Sat, 10/23/2010 - 01:57
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ITU's Radio communication Sector has announced that two technologies, "LTE-Advanced1" and "WirelessMAN-Advanced2" have qualified true 4G technologies and have gained the official designation of IMT-Advanced.

LTE-Advanced and 802.16m WiMAX 2 -- also known as WirelessMAN-Advanced -- have successfully met all of the criteria established by ITU-R for the first release of IMT-Advanced( the formal name of 4G).

The IMT-Advanced criteria demand that 4G networks should provide target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility such as nomadic/local wireless access. The ITU requirements also require scalable bandwidths up to at least 40 MHz.

SO what does this mean? Well, it means that current WiMAX and LTE deployments are not technically 4G because they have not been certified. However, these deployments do offer faster speed than 3G.

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