3G Web accelerator to be trialled by Optus

In order to increase the mobile broadband speeds that its customers can use to access the internet using iPhones and other data-rich devices Optus is looking into upgrading its 3G mobile network using web accelerator technology.

Andrew Smith, the mobile network provider for Optus said that midway through last year it had started to look at accelerators, which are also known as proxies. With the launch of its popular iPhone offers by Optus, the period has been very busy for the company.

Optus was forced to rapidly increase its network capacity following the congestion created by a sudden and surprisingly high demand for wireless broadband services in some area. The company has since raised the capacity of its site and has also increased its transmission backhaul ever since.

Smith said “Through the course of last year we’ve made a number of improvements.”

He went on to say that for the company to improve the browsing speeds on its network the use of an accelerator was one of the options it was considering.

Customers of iPhone were moved across in batches to having their HTTP web traffic routed through the accelerator back in November. An improvement of 10 to 50 percent in web page downloading times has been achieved now that all handset web traffic is being routed through.

Smith said “Since we did it, we’ve been listening to customers. They’ve noticed the difference.”

RIM’s Blackberry service, which predominantly uses WAP gateways, was one of the major services for which traffic was not being routed, along with a few other services.

Smith said “At the moment we’re focusing on the devices that get the most benefit.”

According to the Optus executive Spartan sites like Google search would not see much improvement in speed, the busier site would benefit from significant improvement in speeds.