Today, news broke that the Australian consumer watchdog ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) will file a court case against Apple to force the Cupertino company to change their claims in promoting the new iPad.
Mediation between Apple and Australia’s competition watchdog has ended without a resolution. The ACCC wants Apple to change the name of its latest tablet – currently sold as iPad Wifi + 4G – as it does not work on Australia’s 4G mobile data network. Apple refuses so the earlier announced court case will take place next month.
An interesting case as 4G is a confusing marketing claim. Apple will no doubt tell the judge that the high speed versions of the 3G standard can carry the label 4G as well, while the consumer watch dog will plead that in Australia 4G is a synonym for LTE. As the new iPad is not compatible with the Australian LTE system they want Apple to remove all indications of ´4G´ of the product.
The ACCC goes as far as seeking a halt to all sales in Australia until the advertising is corrected, a fine for misleading customers, and a refund for affected consumers.
You may wonder what the big deal is. After all, the iPad does support 4G, so Apple is right? Yes it does, but only on the 700 Mhz frequency band, which is used in the US and in the near future in Canada. Europe, the Far East, and Australia all settled for different frequencies.
The problem with LTE is that even though it’s a universal standard, it operates on a number of frequency bands with today’s devices tuning into one specific band each. Even in the US, there are two different iPads as AT&T operates on a different band than competitor Verizon. While this may sound confusing enough, we are not done yet. 4G is a marketing name for all kinds of very fast Internet connections, but LTE is a clearly defined technology.
Technically it works the same everywhere, with huge advantages over the older 3G system. Whether you are on a slow basic 3G or on the super duper iPad supported HDSPA+ DC system, it’s all called 3G. The latest standard and acronym iteration is extremely fast and some companies refer to it as 4G, but LTE is something completely different.
LTE is a clean break from the old system. It’s an IP based packet switched technology which uses modern signal processing advancements to achieve much higher speeds than previous systems while using the available bandwidth in a flexible way. It also allows for a variation of antennas ranging from femto cells (miniature antennas covering tens of meters) to huge antenna arrays.
As a rule of thumb, the theoretical data rate is 1 Gbit/sec while being stationary and 100 Mbit/sec while traveling in a car or train. This is more an indication of the potential than actual speeds delivered by AT&T, as customers in the US can confirm.
Is Apple the only one who’s offering limited LTE compatibility? Certainly not, big time competitor Samsung has different models for different markets. Samsung isn’t advertising LTE as a feature where it´s not available. Even better: they offer compatible LTE models to every market. North America gets the same LTE as Apple built into the iPad, but Australia for example got a version of the Galaxy Tab 8.9 4G which works fine on the TelStra network down under.
The same goes for HTC. The newly announced One X mobile will be shipped with LTE for the American market and the company goes to great lengths to make sure it offers the right model on the right market. The European One X, which doesn’t offer LTE runs on a Tegra 3 processor but the US version will use the QualComm Snapdragon. Consequently, the same phone will have a four core processor in Europe, but a dual core from a different supplier as Nvidia is currently not capable of offering an LTE version of its processor.
Are we done? No unfortunately not, there is more than Europe and North America. The Australian and Asian market embraced yet another frequency spectrum and China was one of the countries which went with a official variation of the specification called TDD. There are some clear advantages for the TDD version but that´s beyond the scope of this article.
Confusing? Certainly! Although we prefer Samsung’s and HTC’s approach where a device is built specifically to comply with the market where it’s sold, we would prefer a universal model which works worldwide. Is it impossible? No, the good news is that a small European company intends to fix this problem.
Icera is a Bristol, UK based company which produces soft modems. The name says it all: instead of making dedicated hardware for every need, Icera specializes in general purpose modems which use an advanced processor to be able to use as many radio technologies as possible. With their so called Deep Execution Processor, they are able to support multiple technologies at very low power consumption.
Knowing that Apple had to use a slightly larger battery to support the 4G models, low power consumption combined with the ability to be as flexible as possible with regards to the different standards and frequencies in use, sounds like quite a breakthrough.
Well, apparently Nvidia thought so as well when they bought the company in May 2011 and is busy integrating the technology from Icera in their current line up. It won’t be long before the Nvidia Tegra 3 is re-released with an accompanying chip based on the Icera tech. Only then will we see a true world device which is capable of using whatever highest possible speed is available in a country.
Until then, we wonder if Apple should be allowed to keep advertising a standard which doesn’t work. Will Europe and Asia follow the Australian example and force Apple to stop marketing the new iPad as a 4G/LTE device outside of North America?
Author: Max Huijgen
Further reading: the missing European LTE in the new iPad https://plus.google.com/118292867302583509179/posts/PuBxCuz69DW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icera
http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1042020/fromItemId/142
What a mess. I still can't believe what AT&T is doing in the US, either.
One set of ads talks about how fast their 4G LTE is ("that is so 37 seconds ago")
Another set of ads talks about how they have the largest 4G coverage in the US. The problem is that the "largest 4G coverage" isn't the 4G LTE that they always brag about, but the average consumer doesn't know it. That's somewhere between misleading and flat-out lying…
IMHO Apple's 4G-claim is simply misleading customers outside the USA. The chip used is not nor will never be G4- compatible in the rest of the world for it's baked in frequencies.
I hope the ACCC will win this case with ease, and then the European and Asian consumer organisations will follow.
+David de Beer this http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2010/48.aspxwill be the problem in court.
The problem is the ITU together with the international telco's have deemed it necessary to change the 4G definition to include HSDPA+ as 4G, despite it being only a faster 3G technology.
Because of this, both the ACCC and Apple are correct.
Grrr.. +Max Huijgen beat me to it, again. 😉
I guess +Gijs van Dijk summarised the link's content.
Blame the ITU here, HSDPA(+) is nothing more than 3.5/3.75G, like GPRS was 2.5G. EDGE was not called 3G either but 2.75G, however fast it may be in practice, sometimes beating UMTS.
Sigh.. itu, apple, and our reliance on buzzwords together results in a right mess.
Of course for most consumers either HSPA+ or LTE is probably fast enough for the kind of things they'd want to do with the tablet – in theory. The real dependence will not be on the standard per se, but local cell coverage and capacity. I've had HSPA+ connections before yet the throughput is abysmal.. even if the theoretical max keeps going up. Yet I've also had very good connections..
Both HSPA+ and LTE in its current state are too slow for the original 4G. Only LTE advanced is real 4G.
Unfortunately the ITU gave in to the telcom providers and the manufacturers by issuing this stupid press release.
do non-phone/non-tech people know 4g from 4elephants? could they claim to understand the spec at all? likely not, they will just understand that 4g is faster than 3g and in the case of the new ipad it is "4G".
Everytime the australian "consumer watchdogs" start making the news all I can think of is things like (http://www.r18games.com.au/) their games ratings and how all it does is hurt the typical end user.
But in Australia a consumer can chose between a Samsung tablet which is tailored for his LTE system or an iPad which claims a similar speed but won´t deliver it. That´s a real concern +Bok CHoy
As long as people don't know all details, it is allowed to cheat them +Bok CHoy ?
+Max Huijgen didn't realise Australia have LTE. I should have read article. That does make it more deceptive.
Yip, its different for countries who don´t have it and where it´s not advertised over every street corner and in commercials from providers and manufacturers +Nigel Jones
Playing devil's advocate, is it cheating if the product is 4G by definition in it's country of origin but not in another country?
Should they change their advertising? Sure I totally agree that people should know what they are getting.
However to change advertising, packaging, documentation, etc would take time and then Australians would be complaining that they don't get the iPad for another two or three months while some other country can have it.
So Apple can take the road of releasing the product to the demand and dealing with the watchdog or deal with the watchdog first and dealing with outraged consumers. In either scenario users get the same product in a country where depending on who you listen to, the 4G LTE isn't up to spec anyway…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/exec-tech/high-velocity-4g-but-only-in-cbd/story-e6frgazf-1226257638265
I think it's misleading to cover it as a selling point in an add where the details cannot be clarified – leave such variations to the product documentation.
+Bok CHoy ór Apple makes models for each region which even the much smaller players in the tablet market do. Like Samsung.
The cost objection against different models wouldn´t be an issue for Apple which sells more to Australia than Samsung sells tablets to the world. (didn´t check the facts, but I guess it will be true)
FYI, not only the Australian consumers protest, here is the Danish protest before launch. http://www.mobilsiden.dk/nyheder/forbrugerradet-apple-skal-fjerne-4g-betegnelsen-fra-the-new-ipad,lid.20298/
All major Danish newspapers mentioned on their IT-pages that the 4G announcement was a scam in fact, and would not work on the 4G networks, nor ever would. The two operators that run 4G already as well, clearly state it will work on their 3G networks only in their offers for the new iPad,
In the article it is mentioned, that the Irish consumer organisation considers taking steps as well.
+Max Huijgen Australian population is roughly 23 million. of which only a small percentage currently have 4gLTE so it's not cost effective.
I don't know enough about the hardware to know how painful it would be,to retrofit different region models, but really why should there be different standards for different regions in things like 4G it should be a binary yes/no type of thing instead of the situation like this which to me is like region locked dvds, NTSC/PAL etc. In the end it just hurts consumers.
It's just a difference in frequencies +Bok CHoy .
The chip has a baked in frequency for 4G/LTE, that is only used in the USA.
It is not replaced by an similar chip for the frequencies used in the rest of the world, nor by a triple band chip.
thanks +David de Beer i wasn't sure if this was a case where to make it work they would have to redesign their hardware or something.