Alltel Logo Alltel will soon offer faster data network speeds to customers in 18 of their cellular networks markets. Alltel is a CDMA wireless carrier that has entered into an agreement to be bought out by Verizon Wireless, another Rev A EVDO CDMA network provider, by the end of 2008.

The Rev A EVDO rollout for Alltel will begin in 18 initial markets which will include Charlotte, New Orleans, Phoenix and Tampa among others, and which will eventually become available to the carriers full customer base over a 6 month period.

The initial launch of the Rev A network will only include two of the networks laptop data cards: The Huawei EC228 USB and the UTStarcom UM 150. As well as two cellular devices from HTC: The PPC6800 and the Touch smartphone.

The HTC upgrades are available from www.htc.com while the data card upgrades will be available directly from Alltel.

The Rev A upgrade will allow users to download at average speeds of 500-800kbps with download "burst" speeds up to 1.8Mbps, at the highest speeds an average 1MB file can be downloaded in under 15 seconds.