Why 4G Is Unnecessary Hype Marketed Solely to Strip You Of Your Money

Last year it was 3DTV: heavily marketed, despite the fact that nobody really wanted it. It fell somewhat flat.

Now it's 4G mobile networks. Orange and T-Mobile were so keen to part you from your money that they formed a new 4G operator, Everything Everywhere, conveniently complexifying their plans and packages in the process.

However, 4G is not what you need from a network.

4G is sold as giving you access to everything you want, whenever you want it. Here's some news: 3G already did that. 3G is fast enough to stream live video at perfectly sufficient quality to watch it on your mobile device without feeling hard done by. 3G will let you download large files (apps and system updates), loads web pages quicker than you can read them, and where I'm writing at the moment is significantly (around 10x) faster than the local fixed-line broadband.

I use 3G networks to support my businesses (both on a handset and through a 3G "dongle" access point, which I use in lieu of fixed broadband). The coverage is good, but the speed is excellent. If I want to download something quickly, I'll use 3G, not fixed broadband.

So what benefit does 4G bring? It'll let you do things you could already do fast enough, faster. If you want to download a system update for your phone, you can do so a bit faster. If you want to watch high-quality video, or listen to the radio live through your mobile device... well, you could already do that on 3G. So in this respect you've gained nothing.

However, 4G also gives you a massive hole in your wallet. At the time of writing a typical 4G contract with EE costs a massive £52.99, capped at 10GB! In comparison, 3 are offering unlimited data on 3G for £15 - less than a third of the cost.

But here's the thing. 10GB of data is all well and good until it runs out. And at 4G speeds, if you're using it to access everything everywhere as the marketing execs want you to, it'll run out pretty quickly. You'll have to turn off automatic download of app updates and music on your phone; if you're using a laptop, you'll need to make sure it's not downloading system files in the background, or updating large apps. Otherwise you'll reach the end of the data allowance before the end of the month, at which point you either have access to nothing, nowhere, or you have to pay a hefty top-up fee.

What you really want from a network isn't faster-than-3G speeds. It's unlimited data. It's the quantity of data you have access to - not the speed - which makes your life simple, easy and hassle-free. With unlimited data you can watch exactly what you want, when you want. You can update your operating system and apps automatically in the background. You can sit watching YouTube videos of cats without worrying that you're about to hit the data buffers. Use iPlayer to catch up with TV you've missed. Listen to your favourite radio station all day over the Internet because you don't have a DAB radio or decent reception.

In fact, if you were looking for a catchy marketing slogan for this concept of unlimited, fast-enough data, you could term it "Everything, Everywhere." Shame they already coined that to sell you some crap you didn't need.

Don't bother with 4G. Save your money and get an unlimited-data 3G contract. It's what you actually need out of a contract. (And if you go with 3, as a bonus they're gradually introducing 4G speeds to their existing unlimited 3G contracts.)