AT&T's chief executive said during an investors conference call that the company was gearing up for the introduction of new smartphones and the iPad on its network.

John Stankey that AT&T has an aggressive plan to benefit everyone,” Mr. Stankey said, according to the New York Times.

The company said that this year it plans to pour an additional $2 billion into its wireless network and the wired data infrastructure that supports it, bringing its total expenditure into the range of $18 billion to $19 billion.

As part of that spending, the company said it would be adding 2,000 new cell sites and upgrading existing cell sites with fiber-optic connectivity to help increase capacity, among other things.

The company also pointed to its recent efforts to roll out its 7.2 HSPA update to existing 3G cell sites, which the company says will double the speed of data transfers.