Openwave Accelerator competes with new mobile browsers for data speed

Openwave Systems has announced it’s most recent addition to the Integra platform, Openwave Accelerator. Accelarator is a compression and caching service designed to improve the speed and performance of the mobile web without affecting visual quality. Openwave Integra is a mobile internet services management platform, created to help carriers to create mobile web services for subscribers.

Expected to be available in Q2 2009, Accelerator is designed to plug-in the to the larger Integra framework, and work with all it’s other mobile Internet services. Which means that an operator using any part of the Integra system can integrate Accelerator and increase it’s speed.

From the release:

“As open mobile Internet browsing becomes more popular, smart phone and feature phone users in particular expect an experience that resembles the one on their PC, which means they are looking for fast connections and web pages that load quickly for more immediate access to content,” said Dan Nguyen, interim vice president, products and marketing, Openwave. “Speed, or a lack of speed, is something that resonates with all consumers who typically associate speed with the quality of a network and services. On the other hand, the rise in data usage as a result of more smartphones, laptops and feature phones is taxing networks and increasing operator costs in having to provide more bandwidth. Openwave Accelerator helps operators optimize their networks, increasing data transfer rates and reducing bandwidth consumption irrespective of end device while preserving the visual quality of the content displayed.”

What we think?

I’m not actually sure that my use of the word “competes” is merited in the headline there. Openwave is an entirely operator-end service. All of the compression and cacheing happens before the data ever reaches the users handest. So for browsers like Bolt and Skyfire, that also use caching and compression to increase speed, will the inclusion of a service like this complement their services, or will it make them redundant? Whether or not it affects those browsers, Openwave has specifically stated that it will improve the mobile web speed of any phone connecting through an Openwave-supported network - including feature phones. Being able to offer a speed boost to users without requiring them to search for or install new software is something any operator should be looking at.