AT&T says it has nearly finished rolling out its faster 3G wireless broadband service based on HSUPA technology.

HSUPA can force 3G to 800 Kb per second in upload speeds and 1.4 Mb per second in download capabilities.

AT&T was an early adopter of 3G but its service is much slower than what HSUPA can offer. Since 2005, the company has invested more than $20 billion in network improvements and upgrades.

With AT&T backing HSUPA, it gives the standard much greater clout. The telco's rivals Sprint and Verizon Wireless offer the EVDO-based mobile broadband which is part of the CDMA2000 family.

However AT&T says it wants eventually to move to the LTE standard which is starting to look like it will be the wireless networking technology of the future. Wireless and Alltel have also chosen the fourth-generation wireless technology for future deployment. X