OXFORD, United Kingdom—Finnish company First Hop claimed that a number of European cell-phone operators are conducting trials of its compression and caching technologies, which could significantly speed up the data transmission rates on General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) networks.
According to Timo Laaksonen, chief executive officer (CEO) of First Hop, European operators have either signed contracts for its GPRS accelerator or products from competing developers, or are set to do so. “We cannot say which operators are testing our system, but implementation is at the trial phase and commercial contracts have been signed,” he said. “All the big mobile operators have either made a decision or are about to in the next two or three months.”
While most European operators have largely deployed their GPRS networks, the focus now is on improving the data transmission performance, which struggles to achieve rates above 20 kilobits per second (kbps). First Hop claimed its GPRS accelerator reduces latency, and using compression and caching techniques, it makes data transmission two to six times faster than without the technology. “If the accelerator is used solely at the server, the speed is 2.8 times faster; if also implemented on the laptop or PDA (personal digital assistant), it can be four to six times,” claimed Laaksonen.
Separately, market research firm Analysys said that more than 10 percent of cell-phone phone users in Western Europe will access GPRS by the end of next year. However, the study urges operators to educate potential users about the added benefits of GPRS and drop the use of technical terms like “GPRS” and “WAP” in marketing the service. “Operators must learn from the WAP experience,” said Katrina Bond, co-author of the report, “and ensure that the branding focuses on the customer experience and not the technology.”
