San Antonio (TX) - Telecomm giant AT&T will be greatly expanding its 3G wireless network this year. The company plans on adding 3G capabilities to 80 additional cities which will bring the total network to 350 markets by the end of the year. 1500 additional cell sites will be added as part of the expansion.

Currently AT&T wireless broadband customers can download at 600 to 1400 kbps and upload at 500 to 800 kbps if they are in 3G areas. The expansion would allow more customers to connect at those speeds.

The company will also install and upgrade towers to handle HSUPA or High Speed Uplink Packet Access by the middle of the year. That system could potentially provide multi-megabits per second upload and download speeds.

Apple and AT&T have an exclusive cellular service agreement for the iPhone, but the device doesn’t yet support 3G speeds (it currently uses the EDGE network which is significantly slower).