UPDATE: Tiscali has issued an updated statement to clarify that their deal is a continuation of an existing 'Tiscali Accelerator' narrowband (dialup) partnership and not a new product. The following is their statement of correction to the previous PR:


Original news item follows:

Tiscali UK has announced the signing of a new agreement with ONSPEED, a broadband acceleration software service that uses improved caching and compression to speed up the loading of certain types of content (WebPages, e-mails etc.) to customers. The ISP states that it will offer ONSPEED as a free value-added service to increase retention and customer satisfaction:


ONSPEED claims that its technology can provide "significant improvement in access speeds over any Internet connection sub 2Mb anywhere in the world via a simple download", yet it is important to put this slightly misleading statement into perspective.

The service can not improve the physical speed of your connection, though it can make loading uncompressed content, such as websites and e-mails, far faster by delivering more data at the same speed. However, compressed file downloads, including online videos, game demos and music, are unlikely to see any real benefit.

Indeed some might question why Tiscali would even need to use ONSPEED, since ordinary websites and e-mails should ideally load quickly under even the oldest broadband technologies. Then again, what does it matter if the service is offered for free?