AT&T Unveils A Fake 5G Network In The Hopes You'll Ignore T-Mobile Is Kicking Its Ass

from the 5G-is-whatever-I-say-it-is dept

Thu, Apr 27th 2017 6:23am — Karl Bode

To be clear: fifth generation (5G) wireless should be really impressive when it actually arrives, providing significantly faster mobile broadband speeds at lower latencies. The catch: the 5G standard hasn't even been created yet, and any real deployment of the ultra-fast technology isn't expected to even seriously begin until 2020. That hasn't stopped wireless carrier and hardware vendor marketing departments, which have been hyping the technology as the second coming for several years now. Sure, these salesmen don't know what 5G really even is yet, but they're pretty sure it's going to fix everything.

As these carriers rush to begin tests on the hardware and software advancements that may someday make up the 5G standard, the real yeoman's work is now being done in marketing. All of the big carriers are tripping over themselves, trying desperately to convince the public that they're going to be the first to offer the amazing new benefits 5G can provide. Verizon has traditionally been at the forefront of this hype, telling anyone who'll listen it hopes to offer gigabit speeds over wireless sometime this year (to a limited number of trial participants).

Not to be outdone, AT&T has upped the ante this week with a proclamation that the company is first to market with "5G Evolution." What is 5G evolution? It's a largely meaningless marketing term concocted by AT&T to describe 4x4 MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) antennas and 256 QAM technologies that can be used to make existing LTE networks faster. It really has nothing whatsoever to do with "5G," but you wouldn't know that from reading AT&T's marketing missives this week:

"AT&T* today announced 5G Evolution plans to pave the way to the next generation of faster speeds for its wireless customers with the latest devices in over 20 major metro areas by the end of this year. We continue to lay the foundation for our evolution to 5G while the 5G standards are being finalized."

"Our 5G Evolution in Austin gives our customers a taste of the future," said David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Entertainment Group. "With 5G Evolution from AT&T you don’t have to wait to experience endless entertainment possibilities on the next generation network when you have the latest devices."

Except you will wait. For some time. A closer look reveals that the trials are only currently available in a limited part of Austin, and only accessible from those that have one of two mobile devices: the Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+. And while 4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM advancements are a useful improvement for existing networks, they're not really new, either. T-Mobile has been implementing the upgrades on its own network since last fall.

The features AT&T is calling "5G Evolution" have been live on T-Mobile since 2016. It's not even like this stuff is that new.

— David Ruddock (@RDR0b11) April 25, 2017

And again, this has absolutely nothing to do with "5G." So why are carriers like AT&T and Verizon pushing so hard to hype a technology that doesn't technically exist? For years both carriers justified their higher prices by claiming their networks offered users superior connectivity. But as T-Mobile has ramped up competition, gobbled up their frustrated customers and closed the network coverage and performance gap -- these companies have been forced to find some other way to justify what are fairly consistently some of the highest LTE broadband prices among all developed nations. Their solution for this justification gap? Good, old-fashioned hype.

With "4G" networks, we watched as carrier marketing departments slowly but surely convinced the ITU to let them call pretty much everything short of carrier pigeons 4G. Not to be outdone, you can expect the marketing bastardization of the term "5G" to be dramatically more misleading and annoying.

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Filed Under: 5g, 5g evolution, hype, marketing, wireless
Companies: at&t, t-mobile

30 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 27 Apr 2017 @ 6:27am

So, what's the punishment for false advertisement again?

Any bets on AT&T et al being punished for lying? I bet 1 trillion they won't. What are you looking at?
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 6:37am

By the time 5G actually arrives we'll have to call it 8G to avoid confusion.
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 27 Apr 2017 @ 8:40am

Again, how can anyone talk about 5G when we don't even have 4G yet?

You never hear the companies explain what the LTE in "4G LTE" stands for. Why? Because it means "Long-Term Evolution." In other words, "we'll get around to implementing 4G eventually, but for now here's the bits and pieces we've got working."

And now this?!?
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Mat (profile), 27 Apr 2017 @ 8:45am

Given we technically still don't have full 4G? Remember, 4G LTE stands for '4G Long Term Evolution', thus this isn't even a NEW stunt.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 8:58am

Re:
Unless someone comes along and defines 5G with more authority than a company (Government regulatory or standards body, internationally recognized standards organization, whatever) then they aren't actually lying or falsely advertising what they provide. Sure they're making stuff up and blowing marketing smoke to play on ignorance but it's pretty rare that anything actionable comes out of that.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 9:02am

Is anyone really surprised by this, considering this is the exact same thing carriers did with 4G?

AT&T deserves a good public mocking for this.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 9:10am

Still Southwestern Bell at the core.
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techie1 (profile), 27 Apr 2017 @ 9:12am

Why does the FTC allow this flagrantly misleading labeling by AT&T? This isn't "confusion" between major beverage categories (i.e. beer fanciful labels being confused with similarly sounding wine fanciful labels), it is a false and misleading label within one (cellular communications) category. "Grape Nuts" is not from grapes, nor nuts. The FTC justified allowing "Grape Nuts" as a food description because it was considered "fanciful". There is nothing fanciful here about AT&T's marketing campaign. "5G Evolution" is designed to mislead.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 9:16am

T-Mobile has been implementing the upgrades on its own network since last fall.

To be fair here, this is pretty brand spanking new for an infrastructure roll-out. Yes, T-Mobile got it out faster, but 6-8 months isn't very long at all when looking at regulated infrastructure project timelines.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 9:18am

Re:
Because the words "Grape" and "Nuts" have definitions. "5G" has no definition, while "evolution" implies a very long and slow process of gradual change in a population, which seems to describe this product perfectly.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 9:43am

Shannon's Law
Wireless is the land of broken promises. The reason is Shannon's law, which specifies the maximum data rate which can be pushed through a data link, given restraints on bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. All communications engineers are supposed to know Shannon's law, but most of them are too tired or scared of fighting the marketing department to raise the subject. No marketers know Shannon's law or are ever going to go to the trouble of learning it.

Shannon's law is not optional, it applies regardless of technology, regardless of what the marketing department says, for ever. There is no substitute for putting up more and more radio towers, all hooked up with good old optical fibers, in trenches, in the ground. Of course, you could just do FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) and render all this messing about with 4G-5G-etc moot. But that would be too much like hard work, wouldn't it?
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 9:49am

Isn't "Fake 5G" a redundant term? 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G are all marketing terms without any concrete meaning.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 9:52am

Re:
They technically aren't lying. They will only look foolish in the long run when 5G actually comes out and they have to rename their sudo 5G so consumers won't get confused.
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DannyB (profile), 27 Apr 2017 @ 9:59am

Dial 611
For help with your telephone service, dial 611.

But it really should be dial 666 to reach AT&T.

AT&T: How may I abuse you today?

Me: My 5G seems to be five times slower than 4G?

AT&T: That's what our 5G is supposed to be. Did you read the fine print on page 223 of your service agreement?
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 27 Apr 2017 @ 10:21am

Re:
As noted above, our BS version of 4G was allowed after much lobbying.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 27 Apr 2017 @ 10:28am

Re: Shannon's Law
That is exactly the thing with 5G: waaaayyyy more towers. But "smaller". And everywhere. And they still need fiber for backhaul. But connecting nodes or premises? Pfffsshhh. We can't do that, not since we have failed forever for no good reason but increasing profits. Just like stupid 5G will. Fore everyone who needs to, idk, render graphics over a wireless network for some reason, while walking down the street.
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JoeCool (profile), 27 Apr 2017 @ 10:31am

Re: Shannon's Law
Gotta be a little careful there. You're talking about the Shannon-Hartley Theorem. Shannon's Law is a law in Arizona against firing guns randomly in the air.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 10:35am

Potemkin Networks.
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Bergman (profile), 27 Apr 2017 @ 12:45pm

Re:
That's nothing new. If someone actually invents the flying skateboards from the Back to the Future trilogy, they won't be able to call them hoverboards because that name is already trademarked by a company that makes two-wheeled electric skateboards.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 2:01pm

This is what I have been screaming about for the last 10-15 years. These companies are thinking the consumer is stupid, and well they are right for the most part, As a 3G service, has nothing to do with speeds, It's a NAME given to the compression software that is on the phone and on the sending end of the data stream.. A true 3G connection would be insanely fast. It would download a full netflix movie in under a second, and still have room and time to download 4 or 5 full length songs from itunes. The 4G would be enough to download two full length HighDef movies in under 1 second. The Cell companies know the average person will see the name and think WOW 4G service is so awesomely fast. Well technically it is not any faster then the 3g service, the only thing that has really changed is the compression software that is on the phones and on the "internet" end of the connection. See when you click a link, the information you request is being compressed or squeezed into tiny packets, and then those packets are sent over the network to your phone where it is decompressed. So your 3G and 4G are just a software version number..
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CharlieBrown, 27 Apr 2017 @ 3:30pm

What Is AT&T?
The thing I found most enlightening about this article was that AT&T now call themselves "AT&T Entertainment Group". Seriously? Well, I can see where their plans for the future lay.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 5:04pm

Re: What Is AT&T?
So do voice calls "fit" into the entertainment part of AT&T? Hmmm, I think that maybe it's "entertaining" to them to see someone who actually TALKS to another person instead of texting, teeting, snapping, or IMing them. Makes 'em chuckle every time.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2017 @ 7:50pm

Re:
Download a movie in a second? Nope. It is time you got acquainted with Shannon's law, OK the Shannon-Hartley theorem. Google and Wikipedia are your friends. Good luck. It will take effort.
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That One Guy (profile), 28 Apr 2017 @ 3:46am

"Sure you can take the supercharged race-car for a spin, just remember if you go faster than 40 mph you'll be fined."
No discussion about blazing fast theoretical speeds would be complete without bringing up the huge, massive, and industry caused flaw that makes it an entirely moot point:

Usage caps.

You could have a 100 gig per second connection and it wouldn't do you any good as you'd almost immediately slam right into the usage caps so many of the companies in the industry love so much, such that you'd either be paying vast sums in 'overage' fees and/or quickly have your connection throttled down to the point where you might as well still be using dial-up.

Beyond the fact that they're hyping something that doesn't exist at this point, even if it did they've ensured that the extra speed is useless as anyone who actually put it to use to any real extent would be swiftly and harshly penalized for doing so.
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Mononymous Tim (profile), 28 Apr 2017 @ 12:35pm

Hopefully the owners of S8s and S8+es will complain to AT&T when their phone still says "4G" for this wonderful "5G Evolution" connection.
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J5892 (profile), 1 May 2017 @ 11:54am

The obvious response from T-Mobile would be to call their network "Super 5G+ Ultimate Turbo Edition".
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TitleMax (profile), 9 May 2017 @ 6:15am

That is one fantastic article headline. ;)
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Antoine, 4 May 2018 @ 12:26pm

Ridiculous, it's gonna be like HSDPA 3G which was marketted as 4G. That's the reason why US iPhones have to display "LTE" to make a difference with fake "4G".
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