4G

T-Mobile on Tuesday added a touch of confusion to the concept of 4G wireless network technology by labelling its HSPA+ network as a fourth-generation (4G) technology and calling it the largest such network in the country.

"As [T-Mobile USA Chief Technology Officer] Neville Ray stated recently, 4G is about performance, and today T-Mobile's HSPA+ network is delivering 4G speeds that match and often beat WiMAX and are readily comparable to what early LTE will deliver," Patty Raz, from T-Mobile's public relations agency Waggener Edstrom, told TechNewsWorld.

"T-Mobile is marketing its HSPA+ network as 4G to keep up with the marketing messages from Sprint (NYSE: S) and Verizon Wireless," Alex Spektor, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, told TechNewsWorld.

"It's all about semantics at this point," Godfrey Chua, a research manager at IDC remarked. "You can say LTE is 3.7G and so is HSPA+, and WiMax is 3.9G."

What T-Mobile Said

T-Mobile announced on Tuesday that its HSPA+-enabled network is now available in 75 metropolitan markets throughout the United States.

On Wednesday, the carrier will offer the T-Mobile myTouch 4G Android smartphone, and the Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) Inspiron Mini 10 4G, which it describes as the "first 4G netbook," to the public.

T-Mobile's HSPA+ network is capable of theoretical speeds of up to 21 Mbps (megabits per second), and it has seen average download speeds of between 5-12 Mbps on the myTouch 4G smartphone, company representative Raz stated.

Back in March, T-Mobile pledged to roll out its HSPA+ network to more than 100 metropolitan areas serving 185 million people by the end of 2010.

The carrier remains on track to fulfill those plans. "With an aggressive build-out plan, T-Mobile expects to deliver 4G with the necessary fiber backhaul in place in 100 major metropolitan markets, reaching 200 million people in the U.S. by the end of the year," Raz said.