Wireless internet as referenced for cellphones isn't exactly high speed. 56K is a reasonable expectation regardless of whether it is CDMA or GSM. If you're in excellent coverage you might get a tad better.
It's excellent for internet functions on your cellphone or on your PDA. It's not bad for checking email on a notebook in a pinch. But I wouldn't wanna try to do any real work on it.
I have it on my cellphone. I use it to get certain emergency emails and notifications that are too big to come in via SMS alone. It's also handy for looking up phone numbers (online white and yellow pages). And you can do silly tricks like looking for nearest businesses to your current location by category (restaurant, etc) or name. It can even do mapquest type tricks. And in a pinch I can pull up any website, but unless it is designed with some WAP pages, it'll look like hell.
I probably use it to check movie showtimes and sports scores more than anything else. So it's really more of a toy than a tool.
Now if you happen to be near a "hot spot", these give you some real speed. But they're based on 802.11b, so you have bigtime range limitations. For instance, most Starbucks are now hot spots, so you can use your notebook and wireless card to surf on their T-1 while having coffee. Most airports have hot spots in the lounges as well.
These are going to spread and the technology will get better. I think we're rapidly approaching the day we'll be able to turn on our notebooks and have instant internet with coverage as good as we currently have for cellphones. But we're not there yet.
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