It appears that Alltel, like AT&T and Verizon, will be embracing LTE (Long Term Evolution) as their fourth generation wireless broadband flavor of choice. That said, the company this morning informed attendees of their first quarter earnings conference call that deployment was still three to five years out. "Certainly there is no money for 4G evolution anytime in our near-term plans," said Alltell COO Jeff Fox. "I think from a cash-flow perspective you shouldn’t expect us to talk about 4G anytime at least in 08."

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. While WiMax has an early lead, LTE is expected to dominate.

LTE is theoretically capable of speeds up to 100Mbps with latency as low as 20ms, and, like Verizon, the switch will mean a migration from CDMA to GSM.