ITU finalizes '4G' technologies

The International Telecommunications Union officially ratified LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced as “4G” technologies during this week’s ITU-R Study Group meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
The move follows the announcement last month that the two technologies, both advanced versions of the current LTE and WiMAX standards, had met the requirements for the IMT-Advanced designation.
According to the ITU, key features of the IMT-Advanced standard include:
–A high degree of commonality of functionality worldwide while retaining the flexibility to support a wide range of services and applications in a cost efficient manner;
–compatibility of services within IMT and with fixed networks;
–capability of interworking with other radio access systems;
–high quality mobile services;
–user equipment suitable for worldwide use;
–user-friendly applications, services and equipment;
–worldwide roaming capability;
–enhanced peak data rates to support advanced services and applications of 100 megabits per second for high mobility and 1 gigabit per second for low mobility.