Does anyone else feel that we are starting to see the UK following the US in the marketing of 3G HSPA+ as '4G'.

A classic example is Three who had to back peddle a few days ago after describing their DC-HSPA+ 42Mbps rollout as '4G'. Their excuse was 'that's what T-Mobile describe it as in the states'.

Yesterday saw Apple marketing their new iPad in the UK as 'WiFi + 4G' even though the LTE functionality included will never work in the UK - DC-HSPA+ will be as good as it gets, and in reality nowhere near 42Mbps.

Now we see AT+T getting Apple to change iOS 5.1 so that HSDPA @ 14.4Mbps is indicated as '4G' on iPhone 4S screens! (No reports yet as to whether UK networks supporting 14.4Mbps are showing 4G on iPhone 4Ss with iOS 5.1). This is all ridiculous, when until recently the ITU defined 4G as over 100Mbps!

What can be done to stop this debasement of technical standards by marketeers? Are we all doomed to be dumbed down to the level of the USA? HSPA+ is not a new evolution of mobile communication interface, but a stretching to the limit of an existing one. It is not the huge leap in performance implied by 4G.

The new LTE deveices will hopefully be clearly marketed as the 4th generation of mobile data products.

Customers will have to be educated to look for the LTE label or logo to get real 4G performance.

I expect there will be lots of confusion, some of it deliberately created for competition reasons and we will end up with a similar situation that was faced with flat screen tvs which are mostly HD ready but some are Full HD!

it annoys me, T-Mobile USA says HSPA+ is 4G, so do Sprint, and the phones have an icon that says "4G" - its like no, its not 4G, Its HSPA+ and we can even get that in the UK

they seem to think they can call any fast internet 4G