> "4G" means something. "5G" means something else.
Except it's not that simple. LTE and 5G-NR (New Radio) are continuing on parallel development tracks, with important features getting "backported" into LTE. You could build an LTE Advanced Pro network with all the fixings that would be faster than a barebones 5G-NR network. If you want to be technically precise, refer to whatever 3GPP release you mean. Once you're using "4G" and "5G" you're already in fuzzy marketing land.
It reminds me of the days of CDROM speeds: 2X, 3X, 4X, etc. At one point the number before the X was related to the device’s actual data throughput, until the marketers took over, and they changed what it meant, and then it just turned into a number arms race. I think I remember seeing something labeled 72X.
Most customers don’t know what a G is or why he wants 4 or 5 of them. They think a “bar” is a unit of signal strength measurement. Since there is no regulatory reason to be truthful, it’s inevitable that companies are going to start inflating the numbers.
The X was always the [maximum] speed you could read a drive, not a fake number. Drives went up to 56x by spinning the disc over twenty times faster than a CD player. (With the outer edge being 2.5 times faster than the inner edge.)
The 72x drive had especially interesting tech, using 7 beams so that it only had to spin 5-10 times faster. It also had a significantly better minimum speed of about 44x.
But if that was true they wouldn't need to mislead anyone, because they'd be in charge of the names.
The problems come when you need to make a comparison between different networks.
"4G" means something. "5G" means something else. If you want to represent incremental improvement between the two, use a number between 4 and 5.
Especially when "4G" was already being stretched down to talk about lower performance than it should have been.