AT&T turns good 4G tech into bad 5G hype and worse public policy

29 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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Minneapolis is AT&T’s latest case study in deceptive, but well-lawyered, public statements. According to a company press release, AT&T is rolling out something that a casual reader might think is 5G…

Minneapolis is one of 20 markets where we plan to bring AT&T 5G Evolution by the end of the year, with this technology already available in parts of Austin and Indianapolis today. 5G Evolution offers customers a taste of the future of entertainment and connectivity on their devices.

In 5G Evolution markets, we upgrade cell towers with network upgrades that include ultra-fast LTE Advanced features like 256 QAM, 4×4 MIMO, and 3-way carrier aggregation.

If you didn’t know that LTE Advanced is 4G technology, you might think that 5G Evolution gets you 5G service on a 5G network. It doesn’t. As AT&T is careful to note, “5G standards are still being finalized”.

It’s a bit of misdirection that’s in line with AT&T’s marketing and lobbying style, similar to its fiber umbrella branding and mislabeling copper-based DSL as fiber-to-the-home service.

The research and development work, including field trials like the one in Minneapolis, that AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint are doing is critical to the eventual deployment of 5G networks. They need room to expand their 4G networks right now. But they also need to be called out when they deliberately try to confuse the two in order to stampede policy makers into giving away publicly-owned property, abandoning responsible management of public right of ways and ignoring valid community standards.

AT&T and the other mobile carriers have a legitimate claim to use public assets to expand and upgrade their networks as market demand continues to increase. They also have a responsibility to be honest about it. Conflating 5G R&D with 4G upgrades is deliberately misleading and should not be rewarded by policy makers.