AT&T’s (News - Alert) mobile arm, Cingular Wireless, announced today that it has completed a massive service expansion in Greater Los Angeles with a reported value of $1.3 billion. The wireless operator has invested this amount since 2005 in service upgrades alone.

Cingular (News - Alert) reported that it has spent this money building 257 new cell sites in the Los Angeles area, expanding service coverage and enhancing the capacity of its network. The company’s new cell sites add on to a total of almost 560 new sites in the area.

With the added service coverage, now more customers could get better access in Metropolitan Los Angeles, Orange County around South Coast Plaza, Pismo Beach along the coast highways, and the Inland Empire from Temecula to Hesperia.

“The past two years were unprecedented - investing almost $1.3 billion to deliver a quality wireless experience to our customers here,” commented Andy Shibley, vice president and general manager for the company’s Greater LA market. “Our wireless network is world class and second to none. The major expansion we completed was an extraordinary achievement that enables us to provide exceptional service for our customers today and into the future.”

Cingular most recently announced it made a reported 86 million dollars in total investments to upgrade and expand its services in the greater Las Vegas area for 2006. The mobile operator had announced an initial $46 million investment in June of 2006, followed by an additional $40 million to total $86 million for the area’s network upgrading plan. The investment added on to Cingular’s estimated $6 billion national network capital expenditure program for last year.

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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and Internet Telephony magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit her columnist page.