One of the buzzwords emerging here at this year's Consumer Electronics Show is 4G; just today, Verizon Wireless unveiled 10 new 4G LTE devices. But does the average person even really know what that means?
A recent Nielsen study found that 83 percent of the 2,100 people it polled were aware of 4G technology, but only 51 percent actually understood what 4G entailed.
The confusion shouldn't be all that surprising; even the experts have gone back and forth over the definition recently.
In October, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) proclaimed that only LTE-Advanced and WiMAX 2 (802.16m) qualified as 4G, meaning that 4G networks being advertised by Sprint, MetroPCS, Verizon, and T-Mobile actually weren't. Two months later, however, the ITU reversed course and loosened its definition of 4G to include LTE, WiMax, and HSPA+.
When Nielsen asked respondents to define 4G, many of them sided with the ITU's original definition. About 54 percent said 4G was mobile data speeds of more than 100 MBits/s. "However, "no carrier worldwide currently reaches speeds that high," Nielsen said. Some people, meanwhile, also confused the "4" in iPhone 4 to mean that it's a 4G phone (it's not).
Perhaps confusion will be good for business, though. Nielsen said that almost 3 in 10 consumers said they would buy a 4G device in the next 12 months.
