You partnered with various companies to build a high-speed, next-generation wireless network.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama on the National Wireless Initiative

"You'll have much greater freedom, the whole experience will be much like the PC instead of how cell phones are today, " said Reed Hunt, former FCC chairman and head of Frontline Wireless , a startup that is seeking to build a next-generation wireless network using the spectrum.

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In line with what the telecom said in October, the next-generation wireless data network will launch in 38 U.S. cities and more than 60 airports this year.

CNN: Verizon launching speedier 4G network Sunday

Sprint, which originally was supposed to use a standard called EV-DV for their next-generation high-speed wireless network, have made an about face and now say they're going to use EV-DO instead.

ENGADGET: Sprint's new high-speed wireless network

Since the previous sentence probably only made sense to about four of our readers out there, we'll break it down for you: EV-DO is the same 3G wireless technology being used by Verizon for the next-generation network they're currently building, and has average download speeds of around 500 Kbps.

ENGADGET: Sprint's new high-speed wireless network

The solution: For a few billion dollars, Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) could get into the phone business itself, buying the spectrum it needs to offer not just voice service for all those iPhone users, but to build the broadband wireless links it needs to offer next generation, network-centric computing, communications and entertainment.

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The carrier also is spending billions of dollars to build out a next-generation broadband network, using a technology called LTE, that can handle more wireless data traffic.

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