AT&T this week announced a fully managed Application Acceleration service designed to give Web-based applications a performance and responsiveness boost.

The service promises to allow customers to optimize their Internet bandwidth.

AT&T is deploying a device from F5 Networks that sits between the customer’s Web servers and their link to the Internet. While AT&T would not confirm which F5 device they’re using, it would likely be the vendor's WebAccelerator, which can increase performance up to 10 times for each Web application. These applications can include portals, CRM and ERP platforms.

Although AT&T has offered load-balancing and caching services in the past, the carrier says this is the first time its offering a fully managed service for its enterprise Web hosting customers. AT&T also says its previous support of Web acceleration technologies were not part of standard service offerings.

AT&T has been upgrading and tweaking its Web hosting offering over the past year. In February the carrier announced its patent-pending visual monitoring tool, which was developed by AT&T Labs.

The monitoring software also allows customers to drill down to access more specific Web hosting performance metrics and open trouble tickets.

The carrier’s Application Acceleration service adds to its portfolio of Web hosting offerings. The service is available today to Enterprise Hosting customers in all of AT&T’s Internet Data Centers (IDC). By year-end, the carrier says it expects to have 38 IDCs throughout the world.