While that 10X speed increase is not yet realized in most of the US, by middle of 2012 the new higher speeds will have touched enough markets and enough consumers to establish a new baseline for wireless broadband speed in the US. We will no longer expect web pages to load slowly on our smartphones, and we will expect video to play smoothly and at high quality.

With network performance kicked up a few notches we're naturally going to want to do with them. The wireless carriers want very much to get as many customers connected to their new 4G networks, and to lure us in they'll temp us with amazing apps than fully utilize the speeds of 4G. Consumers might begin to see these fast new apps as must-haves--like mapping apps in the 3G world.

The first wave of 4G apps being demonstrated by the wireless carriers are not wholly new things we've never seen before. They are simply apps that we traditionally use at home, now making their debut on mobile devices. These apps are always discussed and demo'd by wireless carriers during press conferences and private demos, and are often featured on web and TV ads. They are HD video, videoconferencing and online gaming.

Watching with 3G service is an experience that often includes pixilation, jerky movement and even screen freezes. The video does not have the look and feel of what we recognize as high definition on our big TVs at home. This is because 3G service cannot establish a large enough data pipe down to the end device to deliver a high number of video data packets fast enough and with minimum packet loss to create the high-definition experience on the .