Well larger blocks are never going to be faster or as fast as smaller blocks. The goal is to reduce the latency time per kB. The faster a block can be broadcast the lower the "orphan cost" per tx. Still larger blocks will always have a higher orphan rate but they also have higher gross revenue.
The good news is the current method is about the slowest, most bloated method possible for broadcasting a block. Any change is an improvement.
One proposal is to only include tx hashes in the block message. Currently a block message consists of a block header and a list of all tx in the block. Most nodes know of most or all of these tx, hell they already have verified them and included them in the memory pool. This simply makes the block larger than it needs to be. Instead the block message can consist of the block header and a list of tx hashes. The average tx is ~ 400 bytes and a SHA-256 hash is 32 bytes so we are talking a 90%+ reduction in block message size and thus propagation time and thus orphan costs.
For example lets look at this recent block:
https://blockchain.info/block-index/443364/0000000000000003b90c99433d07078d5498910442489383f18e250db0a843e2301 tx and 480 KB. If the block message was changed to be just tx hashes the block message would drop from 480 KB to ~10 KB or a 98% reduction in size.
Another client side change would be removing the double verification of txs. This may have already been completed I haven't looked at that code since before v 0.7.
Improving the efficiency of mining benefits all users not just miners as orphaned blocks are simply wasted energy. They lower the effective security of the network. Further size reduction is possible but requires some more significant changes to the protocol.