3G vs. 4G Networks

Filed in archive Technology on October 29, 2009

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You might have heard the buzz: there's a better, more power cellular network out there. For those of us with smartphones, we're already drooling all over the concept. Its called 4G.

What exactly is 4G? The term 4G stands for fourth generation cellular wireless standards. Before 4G, we had 3G and 2G standards (apparently 1G was too crappy to give a name to). Its hard to really describe the differences between 4G and 3G because the networks aren't actually standardized. Its like calling a website "2.0" everyone means something a little bit different when they use the term. The 3GPP (the 3rd Generation Partnership Project) is a group of telecommunications companies that are working on creating set standards for these networks.

We're going to try and sort through what seems to be the main differences between the two, based on multiple definitions. So one of the main changes is the frequency band, or range. The bandwidth between 4G and 3G are the same, meaning they transfer information at the same rate. But 4G has a bigger range of frequencies that the data can transmit on. They can also transfer bigger pieces of information at a time, this is called Data Rate. 3G offers about 2Mbps (megabytes per second). 4G will offer over 100Mbps.

So to put this into perspective. An average audio file, like a song off a CD or downloaded from Itunes is about 5 megabytes. That means a 3G network needs two or three seconds to transfer that much information, at optimum. Where 4G could transfer twenty songs in one second. That's as much information as the installation download for some games or programs. That's a ton of info in barely a second!

So when you hear all the great news about 4G, its not totally a marketing scheme to get you to upgrade your phone. This may be the next step in having real time search on your mobile browser, or being able to transfer complete files straight to your office computer from your phone.

What are you thoughts on 4G? How do you think it will change how we use our phones?