Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you didn't touch? With technology? With tech
Speaker 1: Stuff from how dot com? What up, y'all and welcome
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulett, and I
Speaker 1: am an editor at how Stuff works dot com. Sitting
Speaker 1: across from me as he always does, as senior writer
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, the telephone was ringing wildly, but without results
Speaker 1: since there was no one in the room but the corpse.
Speaker 1: The call is coming from down the street. Yes, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to cover a topic today that
Speaker 1: is partially inspired by a little Facebook feedback you and
Speaker 1: the Facebook feedback actually comes to us courtesy of one
Speaker 1: of our our listeners who well, he specifically wanted to
Speaker 1: know about why his phone had magically gone from a
Speaker 1: three G notification to a four G notification. But that's
Speaker 1: really beyond this podcast. We're specifically going to be talking about, uh,
Speaker 1: the generations of cell phone standards and what's the difference
Speaker 1: between them, because there's so much confusion there that to
Speaker 1: address that is more important really than a phone switching
Speaker 1: from three G three G to four G. And you'll
Speaker 1: find out specifically, why when we get to the four
Speaker 1: G discussion, and if it's the reason I'm thinking of,
Speaker 1: it's remarkably simple. Yeah. Well, and this listener, by the way,
Speaker 1: his name is Arthur, So Arthur Big shout out to you.
Speaker 1: And uh, let's go into the generations of cell phones. Now,
Speaker 1: you may be confused somewhat about the various generations and
Speaker 1: what they mean and and uh, and you know why
Speaker 1: is one phone a two G phone versus a three
Speaker 1: G phone or maybe you've even heard of two point
Speaker 1: five G or three point five or heaven help us
Speaker 1: three point seven five G phones. And the reason for
Speaker 1: this is because they're pulling, not pulling that kind of gs, no,
Speaker 1: the G standard generations. And that's part of why it's
Speaker 1: so confusing, is that, you know, we tend to think
Speaker 1: of generations in terms of iterations right over time, and
Speaker 1: so technically if something comes out after something else has
Speaker 1: already come out, it's a later generation, right. Well. Typically,
Speaker 1: of course, this is one of those times when marketing
Speaker 1: also factors into that, and we could get into that
Speaker 1: a little bit later. Not to pick on the marketers,
Speaker 1: I used to be in marketing for wild marketers, I've
Speaker 1: never been in marketing. Well, it's their job to sell
Speaker 1: you the new thing. And part of the time these
Speaker 1: generations are an actual new technology and part of them
Speaker 1: part part of the time it's when improvements are made
Speaker 1: to the technology to make it better. And even though
Speaker 1: it's like quite a new generation, yeah, it's like, well
Speaker 1: let's talk about yeah, yes, yes, that's the thing that's
Speaker 1: there's And to add to that confusion, yes, there are
Speaker 1: two separate lines of cell phone standards have developed over
Speaker 1: time and and there and there are branches that come
Speaker 1: off of those two separate lines. But in general, if
Speaker 1: you want to go all the way back to the
Speaker 1: one G technologies, there were there were three standards that
Speaker 1: were more prevalent than any other. Yes, but there were
Speaker 1: multiple standards. Now. In the United States, that standard was AMPS,
Speaker 1: which stood for Advanced Mobile Phone System and that was
Speaker 1: developed by Bell Labs. In Europe, you had two different
Speaker 1: standards that were pretty popular. You had TAX, which was
Speaker 1: t a c S Total Access Communication systema n m
Speaker 1: T is the other that's Nordic Mobile Telephone. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of phone that thor uses. And uh so it's
Speaker 1: me olner Um the So these are the these were
Speaker 1: the main standards. And these were all analog mobile phone systems. Yes. Um,
Speaker 1: actually there's one too. There's one too, there's twelve. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a another that we mentioned, I believe during the
Speaker 1: the podcast when we talked about the BlackBerry mobile text. Um.
Speaker 1: But and and these are all To think of this
Speaker 1: as a generation compared to the the others is kind
Speaker 1: of strange because these are all analog technologies. Um. And
Speaker 1: we're talking, we're talking basic stuff. There's really no maximum
Speaker 1: speed because people weren't using data on these connections. They
Speaker 1: were they were in terms of data transmission, they were
Speaker 1: so slow that uh uh, you know, we couldn't do
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that we do on them now.
Speaker 1: But they didn't use data. In fact, they didn't even
Speaker 1: use text. We're talking voice voice only. Yeah. They this
Speaker 1: is when you use your cell phone to call people
Speaker 1: the in the United States. In the United States, you
Speaker 1: would of two carriers per region because the government said
Speaker 1: that in order to avoid monopolies, there must be at
Speaker 1: least two carriers, and that they would each be assigned
Speaker 1: eight hundred and thirty two frequencies. These two carriers seven
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety of those frequencies were for voice and
Speaker 1: forty two for data, So forty two for data with
Speaker 1: seven nine voice. Yeah, you couldn't really use that data
Speaker 1: for anything. Yeah, it wasn't well that the phones, of
Speaker 1: course themselves, were not geared toward doing this. This is
Speaker 1: back when people used to have bag phones. And yes,
Speaker 1: I actually did have a bag In fact, it was
Speaker 1: a second hand bag phone when somebody else traded there's
Speaker 1: in there were here. You want this? You know, when
Speaker 1: you had a cell phone that looked essentially like a
Speaker 1: cordless telephone. Yeah, and you know you didn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: a screen or anything on there, you just you know,
Speaker 1: you had a phone. Yeah. In fact, this, the one
Speaker 1: that I had, was a handset that was wired to
Speaker 1: a base and you would plug the base into the
Speaker 1: power adapter into your car, and you know, if you
Speaker 1: had to make a call, you'd have to on you know,
Speaker 1: take it off the cradle. Now, with these frequencies on
Speaker 1: an individual phone, you would actually have whenever you would
Speaker 1: make a call, you'd have a pair of frequencies. So
Speaker 1: you'd have one frequency for transmitting your voice and another
Speaker 1: for receiving the voice of the person on the other
Speaker 1: end of the phone, and together that would create what
Speaker 1: we call a channel. So these are those old phones
Speaker 1: where you would try and switch channels. The whole reason
Speaker 1: for this, by the way of keeping the frequency separate
Speaker 1: and keeping the channels discreete is to avoid interference, because
Speaker 1: some of these old phones you could actually get interference
Speaker 1: and start to overhear someone else's conversation that you had
Speaker 1: no business being in in the first place. Actually, I've
Speaker 1: been in several of those conversations as well, where I
Speaker 1: had no business being in that conversation. But in those
Speaker 1: cases it wasn't due to interference, was just due to chatty.
Speaker 1: Cathy's right there, you know. An Actually, that's funny in
Speaker 1: a way because if you think about it, it sort
Speaker 1: of hearkens back to the time of the party line
Speaker 1: on on wired telephones, on landlines, um, so that that
Speaker 1: sort of lingers in the past for both technologies. So
Speaker 1: these technologies, these these standards were pretty much the only
Speaker 1: thing available throughout the eighties and into the early nineties,
Speaker 1: and it was only in the early nineties when we
Speaker 1: began to switch from analog cellular systems to digital cellular systems.
Speaker 1: So now we had a new competing standards. I'd kind
Speaker 1: of like to to stop here to talk about sell
Speaker 1: phones and why they're called cell phones because, um, you know,
Speaker 1: as you're traveling, the signal from one tower will peter
Speaker 1: out when you get to a certain point. Um, as
Speaker 1: long as you are within range of that tower, you
Speaker 1: should be able to talk to somebody. But UM, the
Speaker 1: thing is that it only works as long as you're
Speaker 1: in range of some kind of communications based So they
Speaker 1: put these in different areas, and of course when they're
Speaker 1: mapping that out, UM, they're trying to get a good
Speaker 1: idea of the coverage area is UM. And they have
Speaker 1: to of course, uh negotiate with different property owners to
Speaker 1: allow these towers to be built. UM. And the reason
Speaker 1: I'm bringing that up now is this, this first generation
Speaker 1: came to be known as cell phones because you would
Speaker 1: travel from one cell the area of of transmission to another,
Speaker 1: and you would hop from tower to tower. Of course,
Speaker 1: UM handshake that would take place, that would hand you
Speaker 1: off from one another tower exactly. And the funny thing
Speaker 1: to me is that around the time of this second generation,
Speaker 1: when we switched from analonger digital, I remember that a
Speaker 1: lot of the marketing that went on was going on
Speaker 1: was trying to say, oh, well, we're not a cell
Speaker 1: phone provider, we're a wireless service provider. And it's it's
Speaker 1: funny because I think they were trying to use that
Speaker 1: as a distinguishing difference in the technology. But if you
Speaker 1: heard that, um, it wasn't so much that the I mean,
Speaker 1: you're still traveling from one area of transmission to another
Speaker 1: area transmission. It has to be handed off from one
Speaker 1: tower to the next. But um, they wanted to call
Speaker 1: it something different just to identify that, Hey, you're you're
Speaker 1: on digital. Now you're on a better quality service. You
Speaker 1: have more features and that kind of stuff. You don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about interference the same way you did
Speaker 1: with analog. There are a lot of differences. So in
Speaker 1: Europe that's where Global System for Mobile began. That's g
Speaker 1: s M, and that standard became pretty prevalent throughout Europe
Speaker 1: and in other parts of the world as well. The
Speaker 1: United States also got some g s M. But in
Speaker 1: the U s the there were two other standards that
Speaker 1: started to pop up. One was d AMPS, so Digital
Speaker 1: AMPS system, and then there was a system from Qualcom
Speaker 1: called i S nine five, which stands for Interim Standard. Now,
Speaker 1: this would eventually evolve into code division multiple access phones
Speaker 1: or c d M A, and so C d M
Speaker 1: A phones and G s M phones are not compatible. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've gotten into the second generation of the standards.
Speaker 1: But you cannot, uh, you cannot switch out the components
Speaker 1: of a c d c d M A phone and
Speaker 1: G s M phone and have them work. You can't
Speaker 1: go from a c d M A network to a
Speaker 1: GSM network or vice versa. So unless you will, you
Speaker 1: you can if you have a phone that will do that,
Speaker 1: but you have to have a phone that will be
Speaker 1: able to communicate on multiple standards. The phone that does that, yeah,
Speaker 1: has multiple chips and so, in other words, essentially a
Speaker 1: phone that is allows you to do both c d
Speaker 1: M A and G s M has both sets of
Speaker 1: circuitry in the phone, right, Yeah, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: clear that up before someone. Right, a standard phone on
Speaker 1: one of those systems cannot cross over to the other
Speaker 1: now and go ahead, I'm sorry. I had a the
Speaker 1: phone I had after the bag phone was on a
Speaker 1: competing technology to that too, which was a PCs phone. Um.
Speaker 1: Now that was used much less on some of the others,
Speaker 1: and these are these were the ones that were the
Speaker 1: widespread standards. So when someone says it to G phone,
Speaker 1: and they usually are talking about something that's running on
Speaker 1: this old G S M or I S N five
Speaker 1: or possibly C d um a uh the and these
Speaker 1: standards also did not have a lot of support for data.
Speaker 1: They had more so than the analog systems did, but
Speaker 1: it still was not ideal. And in fact, the earliest
Speaker 1: two G phones, the best way to send data besides
Speaker 1: text messages was to use something called circuit switched data,
Speaker 1: which involved actually placing a call almost like it's a
Speaker 1: modem placing a call to another number and then engaging
Speaker 1: this circuit switched data, which could send information at about
Speaker 1: fourteen point four kill a bits per second h and
Speaker 1: uh so still not a great experience if you wanted
Speaker 1: to have something like a smartphone. It just wasn't really practical. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the information I have says that the second generation network
Speaker 1: second generation networks could hit somewhere in the neighborhood of
Speaker 1: twenty kill a bits per second um maximum And then really, yeah,
Speaker 1: and when we start talking about maximums, you guys should
Speaker 1: know that we're talking about like in the labs, because
Speaker 1: every time we talk about any standard and we talk
Speaker 1: about it's maximum speed. That's almost never going to happen
Speaker 1: in a real world test. So if you stand right here,
Speaker 1: right next to the box, you can get oh, let's
Speaker 1: put that down. I noticed that your pants are glowing.
Speaker 1: But you're getting great service. Um. So next with too
Speaker 1: close with g s M, they got a little bit
Speaker 1: of a boost because actually quite a bit of a boost.
Speaker 1: The General Packett Radio Service g p r S integrated
Speaker 1: with g s M, which created the ability to have
Speaker 1: a persistent data connection over g s M. Now again,
Speaker 1: like that that circuit switched data approach that was not
Speaker 1: that's not persistent, right, you have to initiate it. It's
Speaker 1: during a live call and then you turn it off.
Speaker 1: But GPRS allowed for a persistent data connection so you
Speaker 1: could send data, could be asynchronous. You no longer had
Speaker 1: to connect directly in order to UH to be able
Speaker 1: to get data. If you think about it, it's almost
Speaker 1: like a DSL connection on a phone line. You can
Speaker 1: be on the phone and on the computer at the
Speaker 1: same time. Now, those those signals are traveling through the
Speaker 1: same copper wire, but in a different part of it,
Speaker 1: so they're they're as they're asynchronous you don't have to
Speaker 1: do them at the same time. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: things that two G UH switching over to digital too
Speaker 1: enabled us to do was to use U UM different
Speaker 1: features like call our I D things that weren't available before,
Speaker 1: or voicemail and um uh you know, at least according
Speaker 1: to the information that that I've downloaded from from Motorola,
Speaker 1: I mean, things like push to talk um those services
Speaker 1: were not available before. And of course the short Message service.
Speaker 1: This is when we started texting. Of course, you know
Speaker 1: when you're doing that with a U with a two
Speaker 1: G cell phone, you don't have a keyboard. You are
Speaker 1: doing this with uh, you know number four four one,
Speaker 1: not one, but the other number. So this G p
Speaker 1: R S integration with G s M that actually made
Speaker 1: things a little more complicated because now you suddenly had
Speaker 1: a standard that was faster than the other two G standards.
Speaker 1: So why do you call it? And here the other thing,
Speaker 1: here's the other problems that the United Nations Telecommunications Union
Speaker 1: came up with a set of requirements that you would
Speaker 1: have to meet in order to call your technology three G.
Speaker 1: So in this case, it's not it's not a question
Speaker 1: of how much time has passed it's not even a
Speaker 1: question of whether or not it's a new technology. It
Speaker 1: has to meet certain UM ground level requirements to qualifies
Speaker 1: three G. Well, even with the g p r S integration,
Speaker 1: g s M was not hitting the three G requirements,
Speaker 1: which were at least two megabits megabits per second download
Speaker 1: speed UM if you were stationary, so if you're if
Speaker 1: you're staying still with a H three G set, it
Speaker 1: had to be able to get at least two megabits
Speaker 1: per second of data or if you were mobile, it
Speaker 1: had to be at least three kill bits per second. Well,
Speaker 1: GSM what GPRS could not do that. So now we
Speaker 1: refer to that as a two point five G technology
Speaker 1: because it's faster than two G, but it doesn't quite
Speaker 1: meet three G requirements. This is I think too about
Speaker 1: the time that we started talking about generations. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people when I when
Speaker 1: I heard people talking about the second generation of UH
Speaker 1: cellular technology, I heard them calling it digital or wireless
Speaker 1: or PCs or you know, they had some other name
Speaker 1: for it. They weren't saying, hey, move up to two
Speaker 1: G UM. But I think when it started UH, when
Speaker 1: we started getting into these newer technologies as uh, the
Speaker 1: g p R S. We started hearing, well, this is
Speaker 1: you know, we're not at three G yet, this is
Speaker 1: two point five G. And that's when you started hearing
Speaker 1: it used as a public not not something that the
Speaker 1: industry would talk about within itself, but to the public.
Speaker 1: People said, oh, well, this is a this is more
Speaker 1: than a second generations a shorthand really yeah, and it
Speaker 1: gets even more complicated here. All right, So the three
Speaker 1: G standard is set by the United Nations. Alright, So
Speaker 1: g s MS next generation was Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
Speaker 1: u m t S. It starts getting built out. However,
Speaker 1: around that same time as u m t S network
Speaker 1: start getting rolled out, another kind of network starts rolling
Speaker 1: out called c d m A two thousands. So this
Speaker 1: is back to the other standard, the one that's prevalent
Speaker 1: in the United States. Yes, that goes back to two
Speaker 1: and a half G. That's why it's even more confusing
Speaker 1: because you have a legitimate three G network rolling out
Speaker 1: that's u m t S, at the same time as
Speaker 1: a legitimate three G network is rolling out at two
Speaker 1: point five networks rolling out called c d m A
Speaker 1: two thousand. This won't be the last time something like
Speaker 1: this happens. No, here's another one. In fact, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go ahead and do it now because otherwise I'm
Speaker 1: going to lose my own mind, all right, So here's
Speaker 1: the second one, which is the Enhanced Data Rates for
Speaker 1: g S M Evolution or EDGE Network. Now you've got
Speaker 1: the successor to g S M U M T S
Speaker 1: that's rolling out. But here's the thing. Not all carriers,
Speaker 1: not all networks, are going to be able to upgrade
Speaker 1: at the same level of scale and speed as others.
Speaker 1: But they still want to be able to have really
Speaker 1: good service because if they don't, then they're going to
Speaker 1: lose all their customers to networks that have better service. Right,
Speaker 1: this is not the last time that will happen either.
Speaker 1: So this means that there needed to be some something
Speaker 1: in between two point five G and three G so
Speaker 1: that these other carriers could stay afloat while they are
Speaker 1: working on upgrading their networks. And so that was the
Speaker 1: development of EDGE, the Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution.
Speaker 1: It was developed after three G standards were created, but
Speaker 1: made so that it could boost two point five G
Speaker 1: speeds enough so that people wouldn't just abandon it wholesale.
Speaker 1: So some people will go and call EDGE a two
Speaker 1: point seven five G, which makes you go crazy because
Speaker 1: again it came after three G. Did. Well, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the data too, because um,
Speaker 1: the g p r S connections would average around thirty
Speaker 1: to forty kill a bits per second, although you could
Speaker 1: get up to about a D fourteen. Again in the
Speaker 1: lab UM, c d M A two thousand could do
Speaker 1: about six eight normally, but uh, uh could probably hit
Speaker 1: around a hundred and forty four killabits per second, and
Speaker 1: and EDGE was a step up at three and eighty
Speaker 1: four killabits per second maximum UM. And uh, you know
Speaker 1: the g p RS and EDGE were both uh forks
Speaker 1: off the g s M tree. UM. And of course
Speaker 1: c d M A two thousand was c d M
Speaker 1: A right, yeah, the and the one that followed up
Speaker 1: c d UM A two thousand was e v d O,
Speaker 1: which is evolution data optimized. Well, I do have another
Speaker 1: two point seven five which is e g p r
Speaker 1: S two. Okay, so another another advance on the general
Speaker 1: Packet Radio service integration exactly, but it's UM, it's only
Speaker 1: you know, this is also a synchronous because it will
Speaker 1: do uh four D seventy three kilobits per second upstream
Speaker 1: and one point to megabits per second downstream. UM. That means, uh,
Speaker 1: it's slower when it's sending data from your phone to
Speaker 1: the network, and faster as a download, which is something
Speaker 1: you would want. Is that that generally is a consumer
Speaker 1: in almost every every four of network I've seen. Did
Speaker 1: you want to talk about the features two of the
Speaker 1: two and a half G, because this is when we
Speaker 1: started getting MMS, the multi media mess multi media message service, UM,
Speaker 1: basic web browsing, UM, local Asian based services, just really
Speaker 1: basic stuff. I mean, UM, you know there are some
Speaker 1: apps that run better because all they have to do
Speaker 1: is send a short bit of information. So these kinds
Speaker 1: of things started getting off the ground, but not to
Speaker 1: the point where they are now. UM and and and
Speaker 1: the two point seven five stepped it up a bit
Speaker 1: in terms of speed and improvements, But three G was
Speaker 1: really the big change. Yeah, that's where you've got the
Speaker 1: U M T S which came first. That was the
Speaker 1: G s M version, So G S M S U
Speaker 1: M T S uh that that began to develop and
Speaker 1: roll out first, and then eventually CDMA two thousand successor
Speaker 1: e V d OH joined it. So those were the
Speaker 1: three G standards that that really started to create the
Speaker 1: the environment that was necessary to have a really robust
Speaker 1: smartphone type experience. Although we can remember when the you know,
Speaker 1: I remember when the iPhone went three G m M,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of interesting that, you know, there was
Speaker 1: a time where even the iPhone wasn't tapping into these
Speaker 1: these uh these standards. Well. Of course, moving to three
Speaker 1: G gave you full motion video, you could listen to
Speaker 1: music online, and uh you know, gave us faster uh
Speaker 1: internet access in general. UM. Now, as far as U
Speaker 1: M T S, it could do about two megabits per
Speaker 1: second UM, which is that's that's right there at the
Speaker 1: threshold for three G. Yeah, and it's also a little
Speaker 1: bit faster than a lot of DSL connections. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm still pretty common in the United States anyway to
Speaker 1: see a one point five megabit per second DSL connection
Speaker 1: UM and uh C d M A two thousand uh
Speaker 1: E V d O revision A would do up to
Speaker 1: three point one megabits per second. That was a revised
Speaker 1: version of e B d oh. Yeah. In fact, that
Speaker 1: revision ended up causing another discussion about whether or not
Speaker 1: that should be called three G or three point five G.
Speaker 1: So eventually some people will go ahead and say that
Speaker 1: e v d O or Revision A is three point
Speaker 1: five G because the speeds, the increasing speed was significant
Speaker 1: enough to boost it up beyond three G, but it's
Speaker 1: still far as fall below what the International Telecomunsion Telecommunications
Speaker 1: Union Radio Communications Sector specified as the requirements for four G,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about the second. Yeah, I also have
Speaker 1: a e v d O or Vision B clocking in
Speaker 1: and about forty six or so megabets per second UM,
Speaker 1: which some people call a three point five G, and
Speaker 1: then there's h S d P A UM. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: so this this would be the three point five upgrade
Speaker 1: to U m T S. Yes, So again U m
Speaker 1: T S is the g S M line. Uh HS
Speaker 1: d P A is high speed down link packet access.
Speaker 1: They also got h S u P A upgrade, which
Speaker 1: is high speed uplink packet access. So essentially what this
Speaker 1: means is that the improvements to the standards allowed for
Speaker 1: faster down download and upload speeds. So both e v
Speaker 1: d O A, Revision A and U MTS with these
Speaker 1: new upgrades slid into the three point five GUM designation
Speaker 1: more or less. I mean, it's not even an official designation,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of where we think about it, because
Speaker 1: it's faster than the older versions. UM. Now, in March
Speaker 1: of two thousand eight, the International Telecommunications Union Radio Communication
Speaker 1: Sector said, here's what is required for you to call
Speaker 1: your technology for G and they said, it needs to
Speaker 1: be able to if you're mobile, it needs to be
Speaker 1: able to pull down data at a hundred megabits per second,
Speaker 1: and if you are stationary, it needs to be able
Speaker 1: to do that at a gigabit per second, uh, which
Speaker 1: is you know, it's pretty darned fast. And so now
Speaker 1: we've got companies trying to develop what will become four G,
Speaker 1: but no one has actually hit a technology that does this,
Speaker 1: that hits that does these required standards. UM. There are
Speaker 1: some talk about getting speeds that are close to that range,
Speaker 1: and so the companies go ahead and neither say that
Speaker 1: their technology is four G or it's got four G speeds. UM.
Speaker 1: I think the first of those was probably T Mobile
Speaker 1: USA SO, which was using HSP A plus yes, which
Speaker 1: was another upgrade to u M T S, which could
Speaker 1: give around six hundred megabits per second as a theoretical
Speaker 1: top speed. Uh again theoretical. Uh, still not near the
Speaker 1: gigabit per second range. It's just over half of that,
Speaker 1: but not not to the full four G speed. But
Speaker 1: because it was so much faster than previous generations, again,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Do you say that this is
Speaker 1: the same generation as a phone that can that works
Speaker 1: at at a fraction of that speed. That doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to the consumer. Yeah, I'm I'm just as a
Speaker 1: personal note, I'm wondering if they maybe set the bar
Speaker 1: for what they were going to call for G a
Speaker 1: little high. Yeah, Like the jump between three G and
Speaker 1: four G was a little too broad. Yeah, because there
Speaker 1: is a lot of there's a lot of opportunity for
Speaker 1: layers within those two generations. And as a consumer, it
Speaker 1: is confusing. If I walk into a store and I
Speaker 1: see something labeled three G and something labeled four G,
Speaker 1: then I just come to an that's a pretty easy conclusion.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, the four G has to be faster
Speaker 1: because it's newer. If I see two different three G phones,
Speaker 1: I assume, if I'm an average consumer, that they they
Speaker 1: transmit data approximately the same speed. But as we've been
Speaker 1: discussing if if it's a true if they're truly sticking
Speaker 1: to three versus four. The variation within that band of
Speaker 1: three G phones is so great that you cannot be
Speaker 1: sure that one phone is going to transmit at the
Speaker 1: same speed as another. And you know, it also depends
Speaker 1: on a lot of other things too, like where you
Speaker 1: are and the kind of phone. It is not a traffic,
Speaker 1: that's network traffic that's going on at that time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are Yeah. The thing is that uh,
Speaker 1: you know there we've talked about the different I think
Speaker 1: we had a conversation about the Verizon iPhone a long
Speaker 1: time ago and people compared at the time, people were
Speaker 1: comparing the Verizon iPhone to the A T and T
Speaker 1: iPhone and talking about the differences in speed and how
Speaker 1: much faster it was. Well, I mean they're on two
Speaker 1: different types of networks, um, And they've built out their
Speaker 1: networks more, you know, in different ways and things like that,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of environmental factors that that
Speaker 1: may play into the speeds. But um, yeah, the four
Speaker 1: G what what people are building out now? As FORG networks, basically,
Speaker 1: for the most part in the United States have been
Speaker 1: LTE UH networks long term evolution. Yeah, for a while
Speaker 1: it was going to it look like it was going
Speaker 1: to come down between y max and lt E. Now
Speaker 1: wy max is uh is technology that theoretically could have
Speaker 1: faster speeds than LTE. UM and both of them have
Speaker 1: been development for years. Yeah, so both and and also
Speaker 1: I should add that neither y max nor LTE comes
Speaker 1: close to hitting those benchmarks for a four G Even
Speaker 1: though people have talked about LTE phones being four G phones,
Speaker 1: they don't still don't hit the the actual benchmarks that
Speaker 1: were set by the United Nations. So even though you've got,
Speaker 1: you know, a phone that's much faster than previous phones,
Speaker 1: if you're going strictly by technical specifications, they are not
Speaker 1: truly four G phones, which is again, uh confusing. And
Speaker 1: at this point I think the carriers and the manufacturers
Speaker 1: have just sort of thrown their hands up and said,
Speaker 1: forget it. We're calling it what we want yep yep. Now, Um,
Speaker 1: part of the reason that uh uh T mobile began
Speaker 1: the four G marketing boom was because um they did
Speaker 1: have the hsp A network plus network and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it would do much faster speeds under ideal conditions than
Speaker 1: than the typical three G networks. So basically, since they're
Speaker 1: these things are a little on the fast and loose side,
Speaker 1: they went ahead and said, oh, you know what, we're
Speaker 1: four G and uh, you know, some others kind of
Speaker 1: hollered about that and said they're not really four G.
Speaker 1: But in general, the the consumer isn't really interested in that.
Speaker 1: The average consumer, the average consumer ones a shorthand way
Speaker 1: of knowing how fast the phone was and the uh.
Speaker 1: The other thing I should mention about y MAX and
Speaker 1: lt that's different from these earlier technologies is that neither
Speaker 1: of them have a dedicated uh voice call bandwidth in there.
Speaker 1: In order to make a call over l t E
Speaker 1: or y max, you call via void, yes, voice over
Speaker 1: Internet protocol. So that's you know, that's also different from
Speaker 1: the previous ones. They oh, there's no h. The entire
Speaker 1: spectrum within lt E and y max is dedicated to data.
Speaker 1: So now we've reached the opposite of what it was
Speaker 1: when it first started with the analog systems, where it
Speaker 1: was almost entirely for voice and not data. Now with
Speaker 1: the latest generations, it's all data, no voice. And part
Speaker 1: of that is that these these lt N y Max
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily developed as uh the newest cell phone technology.
Speaker 1: It's just a data transmission technology that's being adopted by
Speaker 1: the cell phone industry, right. I mean, they're there companies
Speaker 1: within the cell phone industry that worked on developing those standards,
Speaker 1: but uh, it was more about how do you get
Speaker 1: data since that's the way a lot of people are
Speaker 1: using their phones now is really they're using as a
Speaker 1: mobile computer rather than a telephone. Um. And uh, the
Speaker 1: as far as the some recent changes there, they were
Speaker 1: marketing decisions made on behalf of a certain smartphone manufacturer
Speaker 1: recently in which they basically agreed to allow their phones
Speaker 1: to be called for g um when they weren't before
Speaker 1: are technically and some people were kind of astonished to
Speaker 1: find out that their phones were suddenly showing four G
Speaker 1: on the screen. Now, mine actually does that when I travel,
Speaker 1: if I switch, if if I'm moving to a tower
Speaker 1: that has a slower technology, or I think what is
Speaker 1: trying to do is tell me that the speed is different.
Speaker 1: But um, you know it will say two G or
Speaker 1: three G when it drops down. But um, um you know,
Speaker 1: of course that's also because um, the earlier standards of
Speaker 1: G S M and C D M A are you know,
Speaker 1: compatible so you can move from one to another? Um,
Speaker 1: I think four G networks are are going to require.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are not branches of those trees, these
Speaker 1: are brand new trees. So yeah, that's that's important to
Speaker 1: point out. And also if you do have a phone
Speaker 1: that allows you to switch from one like three G
Speaker 1: two two G. Uh, that's you might wonder why that
Speaker 1: why you would ever want to do that. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why you want to do that. Okay, Let's say
Speaker 1: that you are at some major event like don't know,
Speaker 1: consumer Electronic show C S and UH, and you want
Speaker 1: to try and check your email and you pop on
Speaker 1: that three G network and there are two other people
Speaker 1: trying to pop on that three G network. Popping over
Speaker 1: to the two G network and using that older technology
Speaker 1: sometimes is much faster because the network traffic is not
Speaker 1: as severe. And I would often switch over specifically to
Speaker 1: that because it would also drain my battery less as
Speaker 1: my phone no longer had to try and and keep
Speaker 1: pinging towers to see if it had a true connection
Speaker 1: to download any recent data. UM. Yeah, so hopefully we
Speaker 1: have confused you beyond all measure because accomplished. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: this is this is definitely a confusing subject just because
Speaker 1: the fact that it did not progress linearly either. You know,
Speaker 1: you had you had companies that would develop a technology
Speaker 1: that would be in a generation ahead, then go back
Speaker 1: and develop technologies that fill in gaps, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily like if you go chronologically, it doesn't quite match up.
Speaker 1: And and the fact that you have two different standards,
Speaker 1: two different lines of standards that are battling it out,
Speaker 1: makes it even more confusing. So yeah, it's that's why
Speaker 1: it's such a mess, and why you know, calling something
Speaker 1: three G or four G is and and it was
Speaker 1: arguably somewhat meaningless. You know what, we didn't touch on
Speaker 1: one one thing. I think the reason why, because you
Speaker 1: may be saying, okay, well, if they had three G,
Speaker 1: why didn't they just go ahead and build an LTE
Speaker 1: network instead of you know, playing with all these other
Speaker 1: interim standards, I think that's because the hardware, you know,
Speaker 1: they could make improvements to those technologies without having to
Speaker 1: spend as much money as building a whole new tower
Speaker 1: with whole new equipment. Um, So they could make improvements
Speaker 1: to their equipment and offer that to their customers without
Speaker 1: having to spend the money to invest in a new technology,
Speaker 1: especially if it wasn't ready yet. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: the cell phone business is pretty competitive. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: people want to you know, if you'll excuse the pun
Speaker 1: for once. Um, you know, people want to find an
Speaker 1: edge over their competitors, and so they're gonna say, oh,
Speaker 1: we have slightly faster technology than they do, and then
Speaker 1: they the others leap frog and it just keeps you know,
Speaker 1: they keep updating firmware and switching out wires and changing
Speaker 1: a broadcast tower. You know that that's less expensive than going, hey,
Speaker 1: let's build a whole new network while it's expensive. Good times. So,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any subjects about which you would
Speaker 1: like to be further confused, let us know. You can
Speaker 1: send us a message via email or adjust it's text
Speaker 1: stuck at Discovery dot com, or you can contact us
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled. There is tech stuff
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