Google reports untold levels of search requests for the iPhone
Google recently recorded an unusually high level of search requests of Apple’s iPhone. There has been a reported 50 times more search requests on the world’s leading search engine since the iPhone’s hit the market. “We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again,” Google’s head of mobile operations told the Financial Times this week. Apple’s UK network partner, O2, stated that the iPhone is bringing levels of mobile internet usage that have, until now, been unheard of. Because of these levels, O2 has announced that they will launch a major trial of femtocell deployments in the UK. O2 is working in collaboration with NEC and Ubiquisys to launch the technology which is expected to improve 3G coverage when the iPhone user is indoors. The launch is expected to take place as early as the beginning of 2009.
Femtocells are designed specifically to improve the indoor mobility of 3G technology by re-routing data from the cellular networks onto wired DSL connections. This bridging will build cellular coverage from the inside out. If it proves to be successful, the trial will be offered to up to 500 users across the UK come summer. Vivek Dev, chief operation officer of Telefonica O2 in Europe stated that “Our Apple iPhone is already driving unheard-of levels of mobile internet usage, and the introduction of flat rate data tariffs is expected to increase this further. Both of these place huge capacity demands on our networks, and because so much of that usage is at home, femtocells coupled with DSL could provide an alternative capacity resource.” He stressed that the potential of this new technology could support an increased growth in the usage of data and plays a very important role in underpinning the phenomenal growth of all mobile broadband usage.
Tags: google search iphone, iphone search