Travelers, rejoice. The fastest wireless broadband network in the U.S. is also the first to offer decent uploading speeds for your chunky multimedia files. Sprint's aggressive coverage rollout, variety of devices, and excellent speeds make it the current undisputed Editors' Choice for wireless data networks.

Sprint's EV-DO Rev A network is an upgrade to their existing, nationwide EV-DO Rev 0 network, also known as "Power Vision." Sprint is referring to Rev A as "upgraded Power Vision"; Rev A shows up in brown on its network maps, whereas Rev 0 is orange. The network is backward-compatible, so all existing devices will operate on their normal speeds in Rev A cities. You'll see Rev A's faster speeds if you buy one of Sprint's three Rev A PC cards, the Sierra Wireless AC595, Novatel Wireless S720 (Stay tuned for reviews of both of these PC cards.), or Pantech PX500, or Sprint's Novatel U720 USB dongle for computers without PC Card slots.

These cards also work with Sprint's Linksys Wireless-G Router for Mobile Broadband, according to Sprint, so you can turn a single Rev A connection into a Wi-Fi hot spot for several computers.

The Rev A upgrade, by the way, doesn't affect Sprint's Editors' Choice Power Vision consumer multimedia services. Sprint hasn't released any phones or phone-related services for Rev A yet. The upgrade, for now, is all about delivering high-speed data to your laptop.

I tested Rev A using three PC cards in three towns in Connecticut. I compared Rev A speeds with Rev 0 speeds using the same cards in New York City (which didn't yet have Rev A service). I also compared Rev A speeds using the new cards with Rev 0 speeds in the Rev A towns using a Novatel Wireless S620 card, an earlier device which doesn't support Rev A.

When I tested in late November and early December, the network and cards were definitely in their early stages. I couldn't initially get a Rev A signal when I tried in November (a week after Sprint had announced service in Connecticut), but the network had popped up by early December. And all the cards were subject to frequent firmware and connection-manager updates; one of them, the Pantech PX500, was in such flux I can't recommend it right now.

With the two cards that did work, the Sierra Wireless AC595 and the Novatel Wireless S720, I got faster speeds and lower latency than I've seen with any other cellular broadband network. Download speeds averaged 1.01 Mbps, with peaks at 1.28 Mbps; uploads averaged 337 Kbps with peaks over 800 Kbps; and pings to a group of four Web sites averaged 183 ms.

Pulling apart the upload speeds makes things even more interesting. My upload tests involved sending a 1MB file to our own PC Magazine FTP server and using two "bandwidth test" Web sites. The uploads to the FTP almost always sped up at 550–800 Kbps, with the bandwidth-test sites showing slower numbers. That means the slowdown comes from Internet congestion and backhaul issues, not from the speed of the Rev A network itself.

Now compare that with the same cards on Rev 0, which got an average of 882 Kbps downloading and no more than 140 Kbps uploading, and the earlier S620 card, which scored 852 Kbps down and the same 140-ish Kbps up. Rev 0 pings were in the 220–250 ms range.

These results mean that Rev A downloads will feel somewhat faster, but uploads will feel much, much faster. That makes Rev A a godsend for anyone uploading PowerPoint presentations, JPEG photographs, movies, or any other big files. The ping times are probably still too slow for good multiplayer gaming, but Sprint has said latency will get lower as they refine the network.

Subscribing to Rev A with a PC Card, though, is expensive—$60 a month with a two-year contract—but at least it doesn't cost more than Rev 0. Think of it as six nights' worth of hotel Wi-Fi and you start to see where you can save money.

As of this writing, Sprint's network covers more than two dozen cities, including most of the Northeast Corridor from Boston down through Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Baltimore to DC; San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco; Denver, Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and other major metro areas. Sprint calls that "20 markets," but lumps the entire states of Connecticut and New Jersey into one market each, so we'll round up. Sprint has said it'll spread the Rev A network to cover all of the more than 100 cities with their current Power Vision Rev 0 network by next fall.

Where Sprint goes, of course, Verizon Wireless isn't far behind. The company is being cagey about its plans but said it'll be moving from Rev 0 to Rev A throughout next year. So Verizon subscribers won't have to switch to Sprint just to get Rev A speeds. Rev A leaves Cingular's HSDPA network in the dust; in our most recent tests in August, Cingular's network provided Rev 0–like speeds, though the company says it'll be raising upload speeds to 384 Kbps (still slower than Rev A) in early 2007. T-Mobile does not operate a high-speed network yet.

If you need to upload files on the road, get Rev A right now. Current Sprint EV-DO subscribers may also want to pick up the Sierra Wireless AC595 card, as Rev A doesn't cost any more than your current Rev 0 subscription. This really is true wireless broadband.