I wouldn't go out of my way to buy a 4G device next year. If there's a phone that I want which has it and it has decent battery life and the data contract is the same as the 3G data contracts, I would get it.

But really, I want to see how LTE networks around the world shake out and whether there will be attempts to make global LTE products.

US is a big country but a lot of people live and travel to several neighboring countries frequently, such as in Europe, where you figure there will be some kind of interoperatiblity between networks in a country and across networks in different countries.

That might command enough volume of devices meeting that interoperatiblity standard that other regions like Asia adopt the same bands and devices.