Jun 20, 2001 12:00 PM

Data speed leads to revenue

"GPRS will be the only high-speed data service available before 3G and WLAN become available in densely populated areas,” said Timo Laaksonen, First Hop (firsthop.com) CEO. “However, it’ll remain a competitive solution even after that. SMS will continue to make money for the operators for many years to come, but GPRS, combined with WLAN, will be the fastest growing mobile data communications platform in the next couple of years.”

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That dexterity, in essence, is at the root of wireless prosperity: Providing faster data service that carriers can turn into revenue quickly. In doing so, carriers get a jump on their competitors and Wall Street.

The mobile infrastructure software company, First Hop, maker of mobile infrastructure software, puts the pedal to the metal as it launches GPRS Accelerator to increase the speed of data transfer over GSM and GPRS networks. The accelerator speeds up the mobile use of Internet/intranet services with standard laptop/PDA apps and works transparently with existing Web servers and browsers, requiring no changes to existing content or applications.

The accelerator optimizes the data transfer over the wireless connection from a laptop or a similar device to a service in the fixed IP network. These optimizations reduce the data sent over the wireless link and optimize the used protocols appropriately for the wireless link, depending on the data format. The accelerator integrates with any IP security solution and provides data integrity, privacy and authentication.

One of the most compelling factors for carriers to consider is the customer benefit: The subscriber can download data from the Internet faster and update information in mobile devices constantly, according to Professor Hannu H. Kari of Helsinki University of Technology. Kari is a widely recognized expert and visionary in mobile technologies. He is the director of Telecommunications and Software Engineering Institute at the Helsinki University of Technology and one of the main contributors to the GPRS standard.