Jonathan Rogers

Engadget reported that a consortium of wireless service providers and manufacturers have agreed on a universal standard of the next generation of wireless technology, called LTE.

Why is this important?

Currently, different wireless companies use different types of wireless technology. Verizon and Sprint use something called CDMA (and EV-DO as the data part) while AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM (and its data flavors EDGE and HSPA). This means that their phones are incompatible. Hence why your cool iPhone can’t follow you to the superior Verizon network. GSM is also the preferred technology used around the world. CDMA is used mainly in the United States, with some small markets in Asia.

Now that all the major providers are on one standard – we could see a lot of easy switching of phones to different networks. That means that the exclusive contracts limiting phones to certain carriers might not be as important. Therefore, the carriers will have to actually provide good service to convince you to use them (or alternatively really low prices) which is good news for the consumer. And you will be able to take your phone to whatever network and it will work.