But aren't 4G, 5G etc. not actually marketing terms that on a technical level only imply some broad capabilities (e.g. possible download rate > X MBit/s), while the actual standards providing those are not called 4G/5G?
> Confusion has been caused by some mobile carriers who have launched products advertised as 4G but which according to some sources are pre-4G versions, commonly referred to as '3.9G', which do not follow the ITU-R defined principles for 4G standards, but today can be called 4G according to ITU-R.
4G is defined in an ITU paper basically. And telcos started to use it for networks that were pretty far from 4G. Then ITU simply said, that okay, sure, use that, because they don't care.