Today, we start, as we told you in previous posts a new and interesting section: Technology for beginners.

We’ll begin with LTE. Why? Because LTE is the present, and the future of mobile phone technologies. Maybe you’ve never heard about LTE, but I’m sure that 4G is familiar to you… Did you know that they are almost the same, with the difference that 4G is the commercial name of the LTE technology? Is that totally true?

LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a mobile communication standard developed by the 3GPP (http://www.3gpp.org/) with the aims to improve downlink and uplink data speeds and save vendor and operator costs since the the standard is less complex.

However, the ITU (International Telecommunication Unit) doesn’t consider as 4G the present LTE that is being deployed. Why?

The LTE standard was developed by the 3GPP from HSPA (High Speed Packet Access, or as maybe you know, 3.5G). The standard began in 2005 and resulted in Evolved Packet Core (EPC)  and a new access network called Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN) specifications. All that was known as “3GPP Release 8″, and for example, that is what is being deployed at the moment in Spain.

LTE Release 8 was developed inside IMT-2000 (ITU naming), as a 3G Evolution, so many people called it 3.9G. In September of 2009, 3GPP presented its LTE-Advanced proposal for IMT-Advanced, officially called “3GPP Release 10”, what is the real 4G.

LTE Release 8 doesn’t reach the 4G standardized peak speed. This is (one of) the reason why is not correct to use this term, although in practice is easier to use this word and we’ll heard it everywhere. But there is a question… How will launch the operators the real 4G when it arrives?

Published originally in http://intotally.com/tot4blog/ by Leticia Almansa López (contact)