Wireless infrastructure vendors were looking beyond 3G at this week's CTI Wireless show in New Orleans, even though 3G is just now being deployed by U.S. wireless operators.

Currently, 3G service such as Verizon Wireless' 1xEV-DO provide typical speeds of between 300 Kbps and 400 Kbps. However, Nortel announced at the show Tuesday that it will begin full-scale market trials of 1xEV-DO Rev A in the next year. That revision will increase speeds to has high as 3.1 Mbps.

"Given the tremendous success and momentum of 1xEV-DO, Nortel has embarked on an aggressive program to deliver 1xEV-DO Rev A," Richard Lowe, Nortel's president of CDMA products said in a statement.

EV-DO Rev A counters HSDPA, which infrastructure vendors such as Nokia were also discussing and demonstrating at the show. Cingular Wireless in the U.S. has already said it will migrate to HSDPA, which proponents say provides similar speeds to those attributed to 1xEV-DO Rev A.

In addition, Nokia also demonstrated High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), which it said provides speeds of as high as 5.8Mbps.

Nortel's announcement drew the support of Verizon Wireless.

"DO Revision A is the logical next step for us to consider as we pursue our goal to migrate our 1xEV-DO 3G network to deliver the latest applications and services to our customers," Ed Salas, Verizon Wirelss' vice president of network planning said in a statement.