Using CacheFlow appliances, service providers can greatly improve the user experience for their subscribers with faster access times and smoother, uninterrupted video. The superior user experience can lead to a reduction of complaints and help center calls, while stimulating greater customer retention and loyalty. The improved Web experience provided by CacheFlow appliances is most pronounced with larger objects, such as video and large file downloads, but the solution also helps speed download times for smaller objects.

An improved user experience also enables service providers to differentiate their offerings in the market and to potentially drive new revenues. One mobile operator, Umniah in Jordan, with over two million subscribers, reported an overall browsing performance increase of 90 percent using CacheFlow appliances, resulting in a 95 percent decrease in customer complaints. A rural ISP, North-Eastern Pennsylvania Telephone Company, was able to add premium, high speed Internet access to its service offerings once it deployed the CacheFlow solution.

"While bandwidth savings has made caching indispensible to service providers in certain parts of the world, its use for improving user experience is becoming equally important," said Brian Partridge, vice president, Yankee Group. "With subscribers’ unending appetite for Web video and limited tolerance for anything but fast, smooth playback, providers must put infrastructure in place that can’t leave quality of service merely to chance."

CacheFlow appliances improve subscriber experience by bringing content, such as Web video, closer to the user on the service provider’s local network. Such content only has to be downloaded once from the original source, which saves on expensive upstream bandwidth and allows subsequent requests from other users to be handled from the local cache. With the content stored locally, it can be delivered much more quickly to users. In addition, a service provider can better manage unusual or excessive traffic spikes when certain content quickly becomes popular--for example, important breaking news or major events.

“This new data demonstrates the dramatic improvement in user experience that CacheFlow appliances bring to customers of service providers at a time of increasing user demands and expectations for Web video,” said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president, Blue Coat Systems.  “Our next-generation caching technology addresses the mounting challenges service providers face in meeting the rapidly growing demand for Web content.”