“New legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives would require mobile carriers to detail their ‘guaranteed minimum’ data speeds and their network reliability statistics to potential customers,” Grant Gross reports for IDG News Service.
“The Next Generation Wireless Disclosure Act is designed to give mobile customers more information about new 4G services, said Representative Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat and bill sponsor,” Gross reports. “There’s no standard definition of 4G mobile service, giving customers ‘vastly different’ speeds depending on the carrier and location, Eshoo said in a statement.”
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Gross reports, “The bill would require mobile carriers to offer potential and existing customers information on pricing, including caps on so-called unlimited data plans, and it would require carriers to disclose what technologies they use to deliver 4G service. Carriers have marketed several technologies including LTE (Long Term Evolution), WiMax, and HSPA+ (Evolved High-Speed Packet Access) as 4G, Eshoo said. The legislation would require the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to compare the prices and speeds of 4G data service at the 10 largest U.S. mobile carriers and provide consumers with a side-by-side comparison.”
“CTIA, a trade group representing large mobile carriers, said the bill adds a ‘new layer of regulation’ to mobile service. The legislation ignores ‘the fact that wireless is an inherently complex and dynamic environment in which network speeds can vary depending on a wide variety of factors,’ Jot Carpenter, CTIA’s vice president of government affairs, said in a statement,” Gross reports. “Carpenter called on Congress to focus on the ‘real issue’ — making sure carriers have enough wireless spectrum.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
How about a bill that requires carriers to unlock your phone after your contract is up
THIS
No carrier is near 4G yet. How about only allowing them to call it 4G when it is. Every carrier says it now for marketing.
In December of last year major mobile carriers
bribedstandard entity to downgrade definition of 4G from 100 Mbit/s to whatever lower values like 15-20 MBit/s — so their marketing money would not be wasted for the long-time false advertisements they were already doing for some time.So now formally they already have official right to call it “4G”.
they need to propose a bill to stop their asinine spending and kick the Kenyan orangutang out of the USA
Speaking of ‘asinine’… *rolls eyes*
Speaking of simians…. and a bigoted one at that.
It’s “orangutan”.
He’s got proven family connections with Ireland. You gonna suggest that the Irishman gets kicked out of the Whitehouse and see where that gets you? Ignorant racist shithead.
Maobama SUCKS!!!!! And that’s a massive understatement. Can’t wait to watch him lose in 2012 and put you commies back in your place. You socialists live to make laws to steel hard working American’s private property and money. You make the working stiffs slaves to the US Government and you low lives that feed off of us through the government. Slash government by 2/3 now!
Yes, that’s why taxes now are lower than they were when Reagan was in office.
Do you even know what “socialism” is, or is this just something you’ve heard on Fox?
Where were you when the Bush White House and the Hastert Congress were hiding two wars off the books whilst still spending like a drunken sailor and cutting taxes (the only admin and legislature to push ahead with tax cuts during one war, let alone two)?
Clearly not getting an education.
Also, orangutans are Asian, not African. They are native to Indonesia and Malaysia. Aside from those living in captivity, a very few survive in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.
They’re capable of intelligent tool use. Something, if your use of a computer is any indication, you are not.
Thanks, you saved me the trouble.
Here’s an orangutan displaying more intelligence than XS.
I propose 3.5G.
It won’t be long before some other politicians try to block this consumer-protection legislation. I wonder what party flag they’ll be flying??
Consumer protection?!…
How about freedom protection from an ever over-reaching government run by political hacks from both parties!
http://bushmonkey.ytmnd.com/
Funny, I never heard of any outcry when this was being disseminated, probably by some liberal loser, progressive prick, Daily Kos reading, George Soros ass kissing piece of shit!
Freedom protection? You mean, freedom to lie, cheat, and steal? Government regulation is always a result of companies not being honest or good. It’s like a parent grounding a child when they do something that they know they’re not supposed to do. If the kid is good, they don’t get grounded and get to keep their freedom. If the kid does something they know is wrong… Grounded! When companies act good and honest, they get to keep their freedoms too. It’s when they take advantage of people, and lie, cheat, or poison them is when they get their freedoms taken away. Or should everyone have “Freedom Protection”, robbers, killers, swindlers,…? I don’t understand why conservatives think that companies should get to skate free when they swindle people?
But then you conservatives aren’t ones to “think”. For example, while lambasting liberals for disseminating that Bushmonkey link, you didn’t even realize that YOU’RE the one disseminating the link in your frickin’ post two lines before!
I wish the government could regulate stupidity.
Would never work. The stupid would be regulating the stupid which is about like the blind leading the blind.
The technical industry is one of the most competitive in the world, if not THE most competitive. Speed claims and marketing rarely survive long in the wild if the company behind them can not support the claims. Competitors call ‘foul’ quicker than a US Senator can speed dial his prostitute.
Why the government feels they need to intervene is beyond my understanding. Except that it makes these bozos feel relevant.
I agree Brian, same thing as the mileage figures for cars. These things are not the government nannies business how a used car dealer operates. The same thing with the FDA, it is up to me to figure out if my food is contaminated. Damn nanny dems them idiots. Leave us alone, we is plenty smart by ourselves. And doctors should not need no government licenses. Waste of money all the stupid regulations. Oh yeah.
One one hand being able to compare carriers using real speed numbers would be very, very helpful to consumers. In fact, it would not be unlike the milage rating that EPA assigns to vehicles. It keeps everyone honest.
However, the carriers have a point in that speed varies based on factors other than the type of “4G” they are employing. Too many users can slow things to a crawl as well as distance from the tower, etc.
Finally, do we really need to create another freakin’ government bureacracy to do something? I think not.
“Finally, do we really need to create another freakin’ government bureacracy to do something? I think not.”
Yep. Sure don’t need no government rules to stop mobile companies charging what are about the highest prices on the planet, bullshitting and outright lying about speed, advertising untruthfully about unlimited plans and much more. Yep. Sure do love and trust those mobile execs. Competition will keep them honest and give us decent prices – yeh, right.
“Speed claims and marketing rarely survive long in the wild if the company behind them can not support the claims.”
In fact, they can survive FOREVER in the wild, if the companies involved collude over certain matters. So they “compete” in defined areas, while having an understanding over much else.
From what I understand, “3G” “4G” isn’t a speed but a technology generation.
It would be nice if there could be independent speed tests per carrier for all “G” generations.
Yeah, it is cellular Internet generation. I would predict the 4th generation of cellular Internet (4G) would be faster than the 3rd generation of cellular Internet (3G). Yes there are standards for these speeds now too.
Another political baiting MDN story. I think it’s time to delete my MDN bookmark. It’s just gotten so ridiculous here.
Well, the problem is real. There is no definition for “4G”, and too many companies are applying the term to any incremental improvement that they make. As mentioned above, theoretical speeds for a technology do not play out often in the real world. My opinion is that there are plenty of sources, freely available on the internet where the descriptions, pros & cons, and other information about these technologies can be found by anyone who really cares about it. How about we, as consumers, put in a little effort to decide which technology and product is worth investing in. Otherwise, we are going to end up with cell phones with stickers reading “Your milage may vary” and other disclaimers stuck all over our gear. Frankly, this smells of a new revenue stream for class action attorneys.
Just read a story on Electronista that says that price is the main factor people use when determining a phone/provider to choose. Over 50% of the respondents say they are unlikely to very unlikely to upgrade to 4G. So they are wasting their time. It is not that important to the majority of people.
I disagree. Many people are buying products labeled as 3G or 4G “speeds” when what they are getting is nothing but a slightly bumped up version of the lower speed. A prime example is the Verizon comparison of their 3G speeds to that of ATT. Verizon was really pushing a 2.5G technology. Many people bought it.
A second example dear to many of us here at MDN, though not a wireless speed issue, is the comparison of the iPad to much lessor competitors. Many people are strongly influenced by advertising (ask Google).
I think truth in advertising for wireless speeds could be very helpful and relatively easy to accomplish. (Now if we could get all the ISPs to advertise their [rated – overhead – throttling – excess capacity oversell = net speed, that would also be nice.)
2¢
How about major wireless carriers who are selling 3G that many times is as slow as dialup- not necessarily during peak usage. As a customer of both AT&T and Verizon 3G, this is for real. Sometimes the connection is slow and it’s not packet loss as the towers are within sightline of the house.
Actually, as far as data goes, they could easily have a standard something like bits per second at 500 meters from the nearest cell site. While that is certainly close to an “ideal” data situation, it’s something that can be easily measured and the measurement easily duplicated.
They should also list the technology they use (HSPA+, LTE, etc.) and what the theoretical maximum for the technology at 500 meters is.
And they should ABSOLUTELY come clean about limits on “unlimited” data plans. What part of “unlimited” is unclear to these folks, anyway?
No different to EPA mileage disclosure, which is a long-accepted component of marketing in the auto industry.
This genuinely has nothing to do with Apple and everything to do with carriers: given their record with customer service, I couldn’t care less.
It’s simple. 4G means it goes to 11.