AT&T's Richard Burns, president of the AT&T wireless network, plans to announce in the coming weeks an upgrade to its 3G network to HSUPA that will allow a six-fold increase in upload speeds, according to Reuters on Monday. The upgrade will not support iPhone users.

AT&T said that the HSUPA upgrade will help meet the growing demand for bandwidth as customers upload media files, such as photos, to their blog sites for example. The update only affects uploads.

"The ability to upload is becoming more important," Burns told Reuters. "Everybody in the street is becoming a reporter so the desire to be able to upload is growing," Mr. Burns said. "That's become a much bigger part of consumer demand than it was just a few years ago."

While AT&T plans to continue its upgrades into next year, they will not cover the entire network and the upgrades will be based on demand. "We roll 3G out based on what the data demand in the market will be," Mr. Burns said.

Mr. Burns added that iPhone customers are happy with the EDGE (2.7G) network. "We're surveying them in large numbers week in and week out. They're telling us their EDGE experience is great."

A spokesperson for AT&T, Mark Siegel, responding to this story, told iPO that iPhone customers can access "AT&T’s EDGE wireless network, which is the largest high-speed wireless data network in the country. Or, they can hop on to a WiFi Network and surf at speeds well beyond 3G."

iPO notes that this upload only upgrade will likely have little impact on iPhone users in the short term. Apple's Steve Jobs has also said that Apple will move its iPhone to 3G when the battery and radio technology permit. By the time all this happens, customers may be ready declare their old 2.7G iPhone a hand-me-down.