So, I don't think that's so unlikely for the United States - hear me out ;-). 2020 is 10 years away. By the end of this year, around a third of Americans will

So, I don't think that's so unlikely for the United States - hear me out ;-). 2020 is 10 years away. By the end of this year, around a third of Americans will be covered by 4G technologies. 4G technologies (in order to be considered such) must have a theoretical peak exceeding 100Mbps for mobile usage and 1Gbps for fixed usage (ie. home broadband). Now, initially, these 4G technologies won't get anywhere near those speeds. It will be very much like 3G where 300-400kbps was the norm, but now 1Mbps is more the norm. When talking about what people see in the real world from these theoretical peaks, we can look at Verizon and Sprint who are offering a theoretical peak of 3.1Mbps and AT&T who is offering a theoretical peak of 7.2Mbps. In real life, tests show: Sprint Verizon AT&T PCMag 0.99M 1.01M 1.79M PCWorld 0.8M 0.88M 1.41M Gizmodo ~0.9M ~1.3M ~1.4M With that data in hand, it looks like average real-world speeds come out to about 28% of peak theoretical speeds. If that holds true in the 4G era, that would be 280Mbps of real-world speed wirelessly. Even if they only achieve 10% of 5% of their theoretical peak, that's still 100Mbps or 50Mbps (and I think that 5% is being very conservative). Now, that is clearly years away. What wireless companies will be pushing in 2012 will likely be in the 10Mbps range for mobile devices. However, I think it's reasonable that we might see 100Mbps broadband to more than 75% of the American population by 2020. Some companies like Clearwire are counting on home broadband as an important source of revenue. As customers start getting increased choice in home broadband (likely from 2 or more wireless providers), cable companies and local telcos will have to enhance their offerings to stay competitive (or maybe the economics is such that wireless makes more sense given American geography). 2020 is a long time away. 4G wireless technology is exciting and is promising to reach very high speeds for fixed wireless. Wireless companies are much more competitive than telcos and cable companies with most Americans having the choice between at least 4 (and MetroPCS has been coming on strong in many urban areas to create a fifth). Companies like Sprint/Clearwire are even thinking about making their own microwave backhauls which would eliminate a huge cost in network rollout (fiber to the site). There's a good decade for 4G to really ratchet up the speeds before 2020 is here. I'm hopeful. At the very least, the competition will give a swift kick in the pants to wired providers.