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With the great wireless race of the early 21st century going on in the US, just getting 3G, both EVDO and UMTS/HSPA, adopted across the nation is proving to be slow going. While Europe and Asia have had some awesome phones with 3G and mobile TV to name a few features for quite some time, over here in the States we have been focused on buying the cheapest phone. Either that, or the RAZR which has been bought to death.

Now that the 700MHz spectrum auction has been finished and Verizon Wireless has been declared the victor, they are already making plans for the future of their spectrum. They have decided to go the LTE (Long Term Evolution) route as their “4G Network,” which can bring download speeds of up to 170Mbps or 325Mbps depending on the tower configuration. This also means that Verizon can switch to an all IP-network, essentially using VoIP to have voice conversations. Plus, this means they will have oodles and oodles of bandwidth at their expense for whatever they decide.

AT&T is also planning on switching to LTE in the future, but how/where in the spectrum they’ll deploy LTE is unknown as they don’t have the nationwide 700MHz spectrum that Verizon has.

Sprint is banking on WiMAX (Under the name “XoHM”) as their next generation network and have already launched a test run of it in select cities. They and their partners are starting to offer this as both mobile and fixed broadband solutions with no contracts, a first for most cell carriers.

T-Mobile, while currently has plans in the works has yet to deploy 3G services.

By 2010, most of these services should start to be deployed across the nation. This represents a major overhaul in the wireless industry and a change in the future. This is an exciting time to be in the wireless industry, much less observe it. The next few years should be a joy to watch.