To expand on the above post from pmqs. If you are generating the HTML, you can use the code below to compress/uncompress the HTML. I find I can compress a 100K HTML to about 9K with these tools, and then save the variable in a DB for later reuse. Excellent!

use IO::Compress::Gzip qw( gzip $GzipError );
use IO::Uncompress::Gunzip qw(gunzip $GunzipError );

my ( $uncompresedHTML, $compressedHTML );
. . .
gzip \$uncompressedHTML => \$compresedHTML;
. . .
gunzip \$compressedHTML => \$uncompresedHTML;
[download]

If your getting the zipped variable from a file, there are many ways to compress/uncompress data, so you may have to use 'qx/ /;' to use a system application and get the results back.

Good Luck