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It is no secret that what the U.S. cellular carriers call "4G" is really not 4G at all. It is really more like "pre-4G" or "3G+." Real "4G", as defined by the International Telecommunications Union, does not exist. Yesterday though, we got one step closer.

The ITU, a branch of the United Nations, announced yesterday the official standards for the next generation of wireless technology. Dubbed IMT-Advanced, the standard lays the rules of the road for what technologies like LTE and WiMax will eventually in to. What will the real 4G look like?

My tablet goes everywhere I go. I use it for work, for navigation, for music streaming in the car. It always has my work email, which I do not push to my Android phone for fear that it would never stop buzzing. I tweet from everywhere, all the time with it, read my Kindle and various news apps.

I fundamentally disagree with the assertions made by the R. Paul Singh, the CEO of SocialNuggets, in his guest post on ReadWriteMobile earlier today. He said that Wi-Fi is all you need for a tablet. I want to have 3G/4G cellular data on my tablet. Otherwise the device is more or less useless to me outside the house.

While walking through one of the T-Mobile or AT&T or Verizon stores this holiday season, you may be tempted to buy a tablet after looking at the low price tags on some of them. However, before you buy a tablet from your mobile service provider, understand their total cost and see if you even need a tablet with 3G/4G, or if Wi-Fi will suffice. You might be surprised at how much money you can save.

Indeed, according to a new study from NPD/Connected Intelligence, a higher percentage of tablet users are buying Wi-Fi-only tablets.

Mobile video is exploding. According to Cisco, mobile video will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 131% between 2009 to 2014 as people access more YouTube, Netflix and high-bandwidth material on their mobile devices.

But imagine what will happen to mobile streaming video as the next generation of high-speed wireless networks and devices become the norm.

Earlier today T-Mobile officially launched the G2, its successor to the the company's flagship Android-powered G1 handset. In its announcement, T-Mobile's top selling point wasn't for the phone's hardware but for the fact that it can reach "4G speeds."

That little twist of language (is it 4G or isn't it?) comes on the heels of AT&T chiding T-Mobile earlier this year after T-Mobile called its own network 4G when in fact it's a revamped kind of 3G. Big carriers having a spat over marketing language? Or genuine disagreement over what those networks really are?

When consumers rush out to purchase Apple's new handheld device, the slate-like computer called the iPad, they'll have several options to choose from. In addition to multiple storage capacities, iPad buyers will have to make an even more critical decision: Wi-Fi or 3G? Although Wi-Fi hotspots are in many places these days, from airports to coffee shops and sometimes even blanketing a city's downtown, anyone with an iPod Touch will tell you that they're far from being everywhere. That problem certainly limits some of the functionality of the iPad apps, especially those relying on real-time updates for breaking news, data downloads or other Internet-only content.

Just one week after Google launched the Nexus One, its entry into the smartphone field, the numbers are in and it doesn't look to be keeping up with the competition. We reviewed the iPhone-competitor the other day and see it as a formidable challenger, but sales numbers from its first week fall drastically short of those same numbers for other smartphones during their first week, according to statistics from mobile analytics firm Flurry.

In the past, any iPhone apps that streamed live video were restricted by Apple. The apps could only use Wi-Fi or EDGE, and not AT&T's 3G network, if they wanted App Store approval. Yesterday, though, Apple approved an app that streams live TV over Wi-Fi, AT&T's EDGE and 3G connections. The updated version of OrbLive for iPhone which was previously Wi-Fi/EDGE only, now allows for the streaming of live TV, videos, music, and photos from your home PC to your iPhone over the 3G network.