Apparently Swedish news papers have dubbed the LTE technology developed by among others Ericsson to ”Super 3G” and are waiting to call it 4G.

I have heard rumours that Ericsson internally are very careful not using the term 4G on LTE but waiting for LTE-Advanced with even higher bitrates to see if it is deserving the designation.

Super 3G gives the impression that it evolves from Turbo-3G which is not really the case, this is a new radio system and although some things such as MIMO actually was specified in HSPA it still was not in widespread use as it will probably become in LTE.

LTE can deliver a gross maximum bitrate in the downlink pushing 300 Mbit/s and LTE-Advanced is said to be pushing towards the 1 Gbit/s which would be really getting mobile broadband to take off.

For me the major hurdle is the uplink however which in all systems, today as well as LTE systems are considerably lower in bitrate than the uplink. This limits the use for mobile applications that transmits lots of data (video cameras) and the industry is looking for cheap way of communicating with cameras in vehicles such as taxis, buses and trains and even with a good coverage for LTE it will not be enough.