The real fact about "4g" is that it is a marketing gimmick at this point. And, that while the speeds are not going to be 10 times faster than average in all of San Diego: with the two major carriers for a year to 18 months. But, the technical explanation is below.

4G

In telecommunications, 4G is the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. It is a successor to the 3G and 2G families of standards. In 2009, the ITU-R organization specified the IMT-Advanced (International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced) requirements for 4G standards, setting peak speed requirements for 4G service at 100 Mbit/s for high mobility communication (such as from trains and cars) and 1 Gbit/s for low mobility communication (such as pedestrians and stationary users).^[1]

A 4G system is expected to provide a comprehensive and secure all-IP based mobile broadband solution to laptop computer wireless modems, smartphones, and other mobile devices. Facilities such as ultra-broadband Internet access, IP telephony, gaming services, and streamed multimedia may be provided to users.

Pre-4G technologies such as mobile WiMAX and first-release Long term evolution (LTE) have been on the market since 2006^[2] and 2009^[3][4][5] respectively, and though often branded as 4G in marketing materials, the current versions of these technologies provide downstream peak bitrates of 144 Mbit/s and 100 Mbit/s respectively, and do consequently not fulfill the original ITU-R requirements of data rates approximately up to 1 Gbit/s for 4G systems.

IMT-Advanced compliant versions of the above two standards are under development and called “LTE Advanced” and “WirelessMAN-Advanced” respectively. ITU has decided that “LTE Advanced” and “WirelessMAN-Advanced” should be accorded the official designation of IMT-Advanced. On December 6, 2010, ITU announced that current versions of LTE, WiMax and other evolved 3G technologies that do not fulfill "IMT-Advanced" requirements could be considered "4G", provided they represent forerunners to IMT-Advanced and "a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed."^[6]

In all suggestions for 4G, the CDMA spread spectrum radio technology used in 3G systems and IS-95 is abandoned and replaced by OFDMA and other frequency-domain equalization schemes.^{[citation needed]} This is combined with MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out), e.g., multiple antennas, dynamic channel allocation and channel-dependent scheduling.