We set out to investigate if there was a noticeable surge in demand for Super Bowl-related mobile websites such as nfl.com, espn.com, foxsports.com, and cbssports.com.

Analysis of a cross-section of 3G networks in Bytemobile’s U.S. customer base indicated that there was a substantial increase in sports-related applications usage and resulting mobile data traffic around the Super Bowl.

When you consider that a typical day consists of billions of network transactions or mobile data requests, the surge in Super Bowl-related traffic becomes even more significant.

Some of our findings:

● The average increase in transactions resulting from sports-related data traffic on operators’ networks was 41%.

● Transactions on NFL.com increased by an average of 3.7 times.

● Transactions to Fox Sports increased by an average of 3.5 times.

● CBS Sports – the official sponsor of this year’s Super Bowl – generated approximately 3.5 times the transactions than it does on a regular day.

-Stacey Infantino

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Image courtesy of Worldislandinfo.com

Every year, numerous awards in different categories are given to Indonesian mobile network operators in recognition of their outstanding achievements in advancing wireless communication technology. Indosat, one of the country’s largest mobile broadband providers, has received countless awards from the Indonesian telecommunications industry. Most recently, Frost & Sullivan named Indosat as the Mobile Data Service Provider of The Year for the second consecutive year in its annual Frost & Sullivan Telecoms Awards.

In a vast country of over 17,000 islands, wireless communications technology has become the most practical and cost-effective means of bringing voice and data services to previously unconnected areas. Mobile network operators in Indonesia have been aggressively expanding network coverage throughout the country. At the same time, competition to provide the best mobile broadband services to consumers has intensified. Today, the number of mobile broadband (HSPA) connections in Indonesia has surpassed the number of fixed broadband connections.

In a news release dated September 2, 2009, Johnny Swandi Sjam, president director of Indosat, acknowledged that continuous improvement in network performance is critical to meet growing market demand with minimal capital investment. Bytemobile has provided optimization services for Indosat’s mobile data traffic since 2007. In awarding a capacity expansion contract to Motorola, Bytemobile’s reseller partner, Sjam commented: “The optimization solution from Motorola and Bytemobile helps us achieve this goal by fully utilizing existing network resources. Motorola’s expertise and experience in network optimization, combined with Bytemobile’s market-leading technology, brings world-class implementation on both GSM and 3G networks, enabling us to offer advanced, reliable and affordable data services to our customers in a timely manner.”

Consumers’ insatiable hunger for mobile data will continue. In fact, the demand for network bandwidth will far exceed the bandwidth increase that the next generations of cellular technology, 4G and beyond, will be able to provide. Bytemobile’s Optimization and Services Node (OSN) is a carrier-grade solution designed to reduce overall data volume in the mobile network by applying a field-proven combination of intelligent compression techniques and patented data reduction technologies. The OSN helps operators increase network capacity and efficiency and lower network operating costs, while deferring substantial capital expenditures. Their subscribers benefit from improved network performance and enjoy full data access and fast downloads. With the Indosat Accelerator - powered by Bytemobile’s client-server optimization technology and installed on consumers’ laptops - Indosat offers up to 7 times speed-up on existing 3.5G infrastructure.

The mobile broadband market is growing rapidly in the Asia-Pacific region. Bytemobile’s Unison™ Mobile Internet Platform has been validated through field experience with more than 100 mobile network operators in over 50 countries - including 12 of the world’s top 15 tier-one operators. The recently announced increase in the capacity and scalability of the Unison platform to 10 Gbps per chassis has resulted in a ten-fold reduction in hardware, power, cooling, and rack space requirements. For operators, this will further decrease network operating costs and contribute to an environmentally sustainable network environment. The Unison platform and its applications will continue to evolve, driving the mobile internet landscape of the next decade and beyond.

- Kok-Bin Lee

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As complaints from frustrated customers indicate, wireless carriers are struggling to keep up with their users’ seemingly insatiable appetite for data. Networks are stressed due to the huge and ever growing popularity of smartphones such as the iPhone and computing devices such as netbooks, USB ‘dongles’ for mobile broadband access, and video-intensive applications.

There are many ways that carriers are attempting to tackle this problem, including acquiring more bandwidth in the form of spectrum and building out 4G network infrastructure. In the short term, some operators are also using technology to “optimize” web and video content for access via mobile devices.

To find out whether optimization has a measurable impact on the customer experience, Informa Telecoms and Media, a leading industry market research company, conducted an extensive study comparing the performance of mobile broadband across leading U.K. wireless providers including O2, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, BT, Vodafone, and H3G. From June to August 2009, a series of tests were performed in and around London, measuring the download performance of several popular internet destinations including Amazon, Facebook, Lycos, and Starbucks.

Informa’s measurements illustrate that T-Mobile and O2 (which both use Bytemobile’s solution), BT (which uses Vodafone’s network) and Vodafone were consistently the smallest in webpage download size and in 80% of measurements were the fastest to complete the download.

As a result of its findings, Informa concluded that enhancing an existing network - whether via 2G, 2.5G or 3G - with an optimization solution produces results that are not achievable via any other upgrades with a similar level of financial investment.

Interestingly, the results of this study echo the findings of YouGov’s recent survey, in which U.K. mobile users ranked their satisfaction with providers’ data download speeds.

Download the Informa report for free at http://www.telecoms.com/category/format/informa-white-papers.

-Graham Carey

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With more than 6 million subscribers, Dialog Telekom is the largest and fastest growing wireless network operator in Sri Lanka. A subsidiary of Telekom Malaysia International, Dialog was South Asia’s first operator to deploy a commercial 3G network and has received numerous industry awards for customer service and quality systems.

Like so many other 3G network operators around the world, Dialog uses Bytemobile’s Web Optimization application to increase its network efficiency and capacity while accelerating web browsing on both handsets and laptops. Dialog’s client-server implementation increases data reduction and speeds up data delivery between the device and the network.

Yet another proof point that the faster the network, the higher the traffic – and unoptimized data will inevitably consume the bandwidth available for it.

-Jaishree Subramania

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