4G refers to the fourth generation of cellular network technology. These generations are a set of international standards and shared technologies that allow phone manufacturers, service providers, software developers, government agencies, and other telecommunications organizations to work together to maintain compatibility between systems. When standards aren’t properly enforced, you end up with 4G iPads that don’t run on 4G.

4G, which was implemented around the end of 2008, introduced a number of new technologies that were not present in earlier generations. Notably, 4G technologies used purely internet-based networks, rather than the physical circuit-switching phone networks that were originally operated by human operators.

Unsurprisingly, the adoption of 4G didn’t happen overnight. Originally envisioned in the early 2000s, it would take years to develop commercially viable prototypes of the various transmitters, antennas, and phones required to meet 4G standards and even longer before these technologies were operational and ready for the mass market.

The realization of 4G service also required changes in government regulations. For example, parts of the radio frequency spectrum that the FCC auctioned off to AT&T and Verizon’s 4G networks were originally used for analog television, but were repurposed as analog television was phased out and these licenses were recovered by the FCC. This is why having everyone on the same page is so important. It’s not just about making life easier for consumers (though that is very important), it’s also about distributing public resources in a way that best serves the public.

The goal of standards like 4G is to keep everyone on the same page, but more people see them first through an advertising lens with the goal of selling more stuff. The label of 4G LTE, or 4G Long-term Evolution, was initially created to describe cellular networks that were using some of the technologies in the 4G standard, but were still only delivering a fraction of the speed required to meet the 4G standard. “Long-term evolution” was meant to suggest that a network was on the road to reaching the 4G standard, though it might have been more appropriate to refer to these networks as 3.5G.

Ironically, though not necessarily unintentionally, consumers often assume that 4G LTE is an improvement over normal 4G, rather than a worse version of 4G. This issue is so bad that as many people have pointed out, even when providers finally reached true 4G speeds, they didn’t want to call it “4G” because people assumed that 4G LTE was better.

A similar problem occurred as the first 5G technologies were deployed and AT&T advertised its network as “5GE” (5G Evolution). As with 4G LTE, 5GE supposedly meant that this was an evolution toward true 5G, even though it sounded more like it should be an evolution of 5G.

This time, Sprint sued its competitor to stop the “blatantly misleading” advertising, though AT&T continued to display the logo on phones connected to its network. Regardless, this has left most wireless customers unclear of what technology their devices are running and how new technologies will affect them.