Local ISP World Online and Ericsson South Africa have made WebOnAir available as part of World Online Mobile, a new portal that integrates the World Wide Web and wireless technologies, allowing customers to have mobile access to the Internet.
A wireless Internet service that speeds-up Web page downloads by up to five times, WebOnAir is ideal for people who use the built-in modem or infrared link facilities on their mobile phones to connect their laptops, PCs or PDAs to the World Wide Web.
"WebOnAir lets mobile Internet users experience faster Web page downloads, browsing and e-mail over a wireless connection, significantly reducing call charges," says Natalie Thayer, World Online portal GM.
WebOnAir enables laptop users connecting to the Internet via their mobile phone to customise the quality and quantity of information they download from the Internet. Its filter proxy increases the efficiency of wireless downloading of Web pages to laptops, PCs or PDAs by reducing the quality and quantity of the information that is being downloaded. This reduces the amount of data downloaded by up to 86%, resulting in higher data transfer speeds.
The biggest benefit is experienced when accessing large documents or pages containing high-resolution graphics, which require more bandwidth. Multimedia intensive home pages that currently take, for example, three minutes to download to a laptop or wireless device can now be downloaded in a minute or less with WebOnAir.
Ericsson South Africa director of customer solutions, Thomas Soneson, says WebOnAir filters out non-essential Internet codes by adapting the image quality and compressing data before it is transmitted to end-users. "Users can adapt image quality, colour scale and remove graphical content, background information and unused spaces," he says.
"For mobile Internet users, WebOnAir makes wireless Web browsing significantly more attractive, further supporting remote usage and wireless Internet accessibility. It is a user-friendly and practical solution that simplifies wireless Internet services."
WebOnAir client software can be downloaded free of charge from the World Online mobile portal on http:// mobile.worldonline.co.za or call 0860 100 893.
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Tiscali World Online was established in 1999 following the merger of the ICON, Global and YEBO dial-up Internet subscriber bases. Now owned by Tiscali International BV, Tiscali World Online ranks among the fastest growing ISPs in SA. With 23% of the local ISP market, the company has over 130 000 dial-up, 2 000 business subscribers and two million visitors per month to its portal.
Tiscali International BV is one of the largest ISPs in Europe, providing access and a wide variety of content, applications and services to its customers. It has the largest geographical footprint of any European Internet provider with local operations in 14 countries.
Taking advantage of the convergence of technology, Tiscali World Online has expanded its services to include telecommunications following its appointment as a Cellular Service Provider by Vodacom. Tiscali World Online has thus grown from a pure dial-up ISP into a communications company providing both voice and data solutions.
The company is set apart from other market players through its operational style and solution sets which ensure customer-focused solutions through unique, value-added offerings. These include connectivity and e-commerce solutions, VPNs, server and application hosting, e-mail solutions, Web site development and hosting, portal advertising and security applications.
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