LIVE FROM BROADBAND WORLD FORUM 2014: Mansoor Hanif, director of RAN development and programmes for UK number one operator EE, said there is “a lot of confusion out there” about the industry’s latest buzz-phrase, 4.5G.

Alongside 5G, another term which lacks a firm definition, the use of 4.5G has become more common in recent weeks, including from vendors Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei (a major supplier to EE) and operator Vodafone – with differing meanings in each case.

“To some people, 4.5G is the combination of 4G plus Wi-Fi aggregated, to some people it’s something like that but closer to 5G. Each partner, each vendor, each operator has their own view. Vodafone in one presentation said that 4.5G refers to carrier aggregation,” he said.

“Our consensus is that 4.5G is not carrier aggregation, or any variation around carrier aggregation. The more common view is that 4.5G is a variation on the theme of combining 4G with Wi-Fi, and aggregating that.”

Having done his best to come up with a definition of 4.5G, Hanif then shared his view of why this is not the right approach.

“Everybody spends billions on licence fees, that’s because we care about the customer experience, we care about the quality of the experience. We protect that spectrum – every day we’re going out looking for interferers with that spectrum,” he said.

“Any technology, whatever technology that is – and Wi-Fi has been hugely successful – but any technology based on public spectrum you cannot guarantee the quality of service.”

“It certainly offers another path, there’s no doubt about it, and we are experimenting with it in certain applications, but we don’t see it as a reasonable alternative to give the same quality of experience to our customers, for the same price, as with LTE,” the executive observed.