Even as broadband penetration in the USA increases, many users are still frustrated with the lack of enough data transmisson speed to bring really great internet functionality to all the devices in your life.

Ralph de la Vega, COO of ATT, says that things are going to change fast and get faster. Speaking at a Morgan Stanley event he said that sometime in 2009 ATT would be able to deliver speed in excess of 20 megabits per second. That is fast enough to allow some spectacular streaming of data and video content, provide downloadable movies to a video capable phone with no wait times, and allow amazing on-the-road mashups for travel that could, for example, provide a driver with extensive real time traffic data and routing.

Sure, many great things can be done now at slower speeds but super high transmission rates are going to resolve some of the peskiest problems with data sharing applications and video.

“It’s clear to us that we are in the very early stages of what I would call a wireless data revolution….” said de la Vega.

As we noted earlier this week, mobile is the most explosive market for online services. One of the bottlenecks there has been the lack of cheap bandwidth. With speeds like those discussed by de la Vega we’ll see more people using their phones as modems for other applications or moving to ISPs like Sprint and ATT to fuel their home and laptop broadband as well as their phones. Although it is far too early to know how things will shake out in the broader market, high quality mobile broadband may bring an economy of scale to the mobile market that would change the game entirely as people may shift away from Cable, Satellite, and DSL broadband in favor of solutions integrated with their mobile devices.