4G is considerably faster than 3G, the use of a given frequency band doesn't determine the speed rather the amount of spectrum assigned within that band. The 3G UMTS standard uses 5MHz of radio bandwidth, this typically refers to 5MHz in the uplink, from device to network, and 5MHz in the downlink, from network to device, often represented as 2 x 5MHz. The latest 3G feature, known as dual-cell HSDPA can aggregate 2 of these 5MHz channels in the downlink. 4G LTE can use up to 2 x 20MHz channels, hence EE's recent "double speed" 4G marketing as they've added this extra channel bandwidth. In the near future a new 4G feature will allow multiple 4G channels to be aggregated, up to 2 x 100MHz, therefore increasing the peak and average data rates still further. Other advantages of 4G include a much faster uplink and much lower latency (RTT), therefore enabling a more optimised TCP session resulting in a faster application layer performance. Hope this helps, if anyone has specific questions about any of the 3GPP cellular technologies please message me, if I can help I'll do so. Best regards...