CTIA-ATIS Preview: Is LTE really better than another 4G flavor?

I’ve been harping on the operators quite a bit lately on their use of the term 4G, so much that I’ve tried to avoid using the acronym myself to avoid promulgating my own subjective definition of what constitutes 4G. But I’ve also given the operators a little slack. If we accept that 4G has really become a marketing term—divorced from any real technical definition— and if operators are truly capable of delivering a new mobile broadband experience beyond what is possible with 3G networks, then they can use whatever delineating terminology they want. If they can walk the walk, they should be able to talk the talk.

T-Mobile’s (NYSE:DT) high-speed packet access plus (HSPA+) has been impressive so far, and once AT&T (NYSE:T) gets its fiber backhaul in place, its new ‘4G’ network should be just as nifty. A year ago, I wouldn’t have referred to either of these networks as 4G, while I would have described Sprint (NYSE:S) and Clearwire’s (NASDAQ:CLWR) WiMax and Verizon Wireless’s (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD) long-term evolution (LTE) networks as 4G without blinking a lash.

But if HSPA+ is capable of delivering 3 Mb/s to a smartphone and upwards of 8 Mb/s to a USB data card, who is to say that T-Mobile’s 4G is any worse than Sprint or Verizon’s 4G—at least from a customer’s point of view. Furthermore, as HSPA+ co-opts many of LTE’s bright shiny features, like smart antenna technologies and big fat carriers, what we formerly deemed 3G technologies seem set to match WiMax and LTE’s key innovations.

You’ve heard a lot of this from me before, and my aim here is not to write another column about the twisting meaning of 4G. Rather I’d like to turn the question on its head. If HSPA+, if not in its current form than in its future iterations, is capable of matching LTE and WiMax bit for bit, than why on earth are we bothering with LTE? That may sound like a rhetorical question, but I really do want a straight answer.

I, like so many of my colleagues, for many years have been operating under the assumption that these new-fangled orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA) radio technologies were inherently better than their CDMA predecessors. Why spend billions of dollars on new spectrum and new networks if a simple upgrade can achieve the same results?

Given that more than 100 operators globally have justified that expense in their current and future roadmaps, there must be something to the argument that LTE is better. But what exactly are LTE’s advantages? From where I’m standing the old standby of providing a red-hot connection to the handset or laptop just isn’t cutting it any more.

More: For My Next Trick, I Ask Four 4G Operators: Why Bother With LTE?