You’ve got to hand it to AT&T: They’ve become the tech version of comedian Rodney Dangerfield and his classic line, “I can’t get no respect!” But with new software upgrades recently completed at their cell sites across the nation, that may change soon enough.

AT&T announced this week that the stage is now set for faster 3G speeds and enhanced mobile data performance thanks to the new software upgrades -- although the fruits of those labors won’t begin to appear until later this year and even into 2011.

The faster speed will largely come thanks to the deployment of High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 technology across all of AT&T 3G cell sites. For iPhone 3GS owners, this will be welcome news, since the hardware inside their handset is already ready for the improved speed.

If you live in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles or Miami, you might already be feeling some of the HSPA 7.2 speed burns, since AT&T started flipping the switch on the service in those cities on a site-by-site basis last month. The rest of America will have to wait until the speed bump is slowly rolled out throughout the rest of this year and into the next.

“We are focused on providing our customers with the industry’s best combination of mobile broadband speed, performance, coverage and available devices,” said John Stankey, president and CEO, AT&T Operations. “As we light up new backhaul connections across the country, we’re able to deliver a meaningful 3G speed boost for millions of customers who are already using HSPA 7.2-compatible devices. At the same time, we’re also looking to the future with these backhaul enhancements, which will support our move to next-generation LTE technology starting in 2011.”

LTE (Long Term Evolution, or what is widely referred to as “4G”) technology promises to blow the roof off mobile Internet speeds, and AT&T is in a race with competitors Verizon and Sprint to deploy them sooner than later. However, AT&T feels that 3G will continue to be the “predominant mobile broadband network technology worldwide for smartphones for the next few years.”