Looking forward to 4G on your brand new Apple iPad? Don’t hold your breath!

Apple has been forced to drop the use of the term “4G” in its UK advertising for the new iPad, bacause not only is 4G not yet available to iPad users in the UK and Europe; it also appears that not all new iPads will be able to work on UK and European 4G when it does arrive.

In the original marketing explosion for the new iPad launched in March this year, adverts for the tablet claimed it would work with 4G, meaning “fourth generation mobile technology”. The 4G in question was a technology known as Long Term Evolution (LTE), which is starting to appear in the US.

Other countries are expected to catch up with the roll out of LTE in the coming months or years. In an interview in 2011, the head of Ericsson in sub-Saharan Africa, Lars Linden, predicted that the continent’s major carriers would start rolling 4G out in dense, high-data use areas such as South Africa this year already.

But this has not happened yet, and as is the case in the UK currently, 4G operates on different frequencies in different regions with different carriers, and there is no assurance yet that new iPads will work on non-US 4G frequencies.

The backlash on this from the UK public led their Advertising Standards Authority to compel Apple to change their advertising of the new iPad.

In a statement, Apple said,

Carriers do not all refer to their high speed networks with the same terminology, therefore we’ve decided to use ‘wi-fi + cellular’ as a simple term which describes all the high speed networks supported by the new iPad.

They added, “The advanced wireless features of the new iPad have not changed.”

With iPads flying off the shelves this side of the equator, let’s hope that when the mobile-tech powers-that-be do see fit to grant us 4G, they’ll take this issue into account. Meanwhile, there have been no complaints from new users regarding the 3G-readiness of the new tablet. It was released in South Africa late last month.

[Source: BBC News, Times LIVE, ArticlesInbox]