The U.S. may finally be moving out of the cell phone Dark Ages. For starters, high-speed cell phone networks — generically called 3G — are finally rolling out across the U.S., with the four major carriers promising that by the end of this year, about 85 percent of the U.S. will be able to surf the Web at speeds approaching that of home DSL (assuming customers are willing to pony up for the new services). But there may also be some price competition to keep those services affordable: this year, a new technology service called WiMAX will appear, initially from Sprint and a start-up called Clearwire. WiMAX will provide an alternative form of high speed wireless connection. At the Barcelona show, Sprint showed several new WiMAX phones made by Samsung that had powerful Web-browsing features. All those new networks will let U.S. carriers start providing the services that Europeans and Asian users now take for granted.

But that’s not all. Another kind of new signal is coming to U.S. cell phones this year: direct broadcast television. That takes a bit of explanation. There is already some video available on existing cell phone networks, but the quality of the images tends to be variable and is sometimes quite choppy — more like watching a slide show than video. What the Asians and Europeans have learned is that video works best when it’s transmitted as a separate signal — in a sense, a step back to the way old-fashioned television is sent, as a single broadcast that reaches many receivers.

In the U.S., Verizon will be the first to introduce this new television service later this year, and in Barcelona AT&T announced they will do the same. The good news is that unlike the early days of the U.S. cell phone market, both carriers will actually use the same technology, which should make a bigger market for cool handsets. The bad news is that, once again, the Americans have chosen a form of mobile TV broadcast that’s different than the one most of the rest of the world has adopted, so it could be a bit like the GSM situation revisited.

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If all that sounds a bit confusing, it is, and in the end that’s the central cause of the American mobile malaise. While choice is generally a good thing, it has unquestionably slowed progress. There’s some optimism that as the cell phone industry moves toward the next level of service — 4G — U.S. carriers may begin to converge on network standards. Or perhaps rugged American individualism will once again reject the route of compromise. In any event, don’t put down a deposit on that Samsung Ultra Smart quite yet.

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