The ITU IMT standards are dumb and meaningless.

They just set aspirational targets, but don’t define any technology for meeting those targets. ITU jumped from 200 kbps for 3G to 1 gigabit for 4G. That was not a useful definition and the market correctly ignored it. Imagine if we had “3G” wired networking defined as 100 mbps and “4G” wired networking aspirationally defined as 10 gigabit. What would you do when the IEEE (the folks who actually make the technology) release 1G Ethernet. Would you insist on calling it 3.5G wired networking?

“4G” is LTE. It’s 4G because it’s what came after HSDPA/EVDO, not because it meets any particular ITU target.

Without any sort of backing specification, the terminology of 3G vs 4G vs 5G is dumb and meaningless, as we see with AT&T calling their network 5G (E), even though it's no better than what their competitors call 4G.

Also, it's disingenuous to describe the jump as from 200kbps to 1Gbps, since HSDPA offering 14Mbps was already being deployed prior to when this particular ITU standard came out.

(https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/gsm-technology indicates deployments of HSDPA started in 2005)

To consumers, 5G just means sufficiently faster than 4G to warrant a new number. “5G” presents an odd scenario, because there are parallel lines of evolution from what consumers currently think of as “4G.” LTE Advance Pro continues to evolve LTE, while 5G NR starts over with an incompatible air interface. Until you start using higher frequency spectrum and small cells, performance wise there is a lot of overlap between the two. An LTE Advance Pro network with a lot of spectrum is going to perform better than a 5GNR network without as much spectrum.

The problem here appears to be not that AT&T is departing from the ITU monikers, or using 5G to refer to LTE Advance Pro, but that it’s selling something as “5G” that’s not faster than “4G.”

>The ITU IMT standards are dumb and meaningless.

The last time AT&T did this the ITU's response was "4G can now also be 3G with 'substantial improvements'"

Source: http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2010/48.as...

LTE does achieve up to 100 Mbps on a highway for me in Serbia, and LTE Advanced does up to 150 Mbps while stationary in a crowded city area with a base station far away. However, that is nowhere near 1 Gbps. I don't know any devices getting over 300 Mbps over LTE Advanced (4G+).