At the moment, there's three front-runners for the fourth-generation wireless broadband crown: 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution), mobile WiMax and 3GPP2 UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband). All three standards will offer low latency and theoretical max speeds that will eventually make current US EVDO and HSDPA speeds (and even some home landline connections) seem anemic. However, while UMB is waning fast and WiMax has an early lead (dependent on Sprint's success), LTE is officially leading the 4G push.

According to the GSM Association (GSMA), the deployment of LTE technology should be able to deliver real world speeds of 100 Mbps in Japan and South Korea by 2010, Europe by 2012 and the U.S. by... well, later. "Tests show LTE can produce speeds up to 186 Mbps," said GSMA director Dan Warren. "But obviously you never get the top speed and they vary with distance from the base station and interference." Both AT&T and Verizon have decided to embrace LTE as their 4G wireless broadband flavor of choice, with trials starting this year. You can be fairly certain the speeds you see from either of those carriers at first won't be anywhere near 100Mbps.