Excellent news for on-line avid gamers in South Africa – MyBroadband

With the approaching launch of a brand new subsea cable to Australia, South African on-line avid gamers might quickly expertise decrease latency in multiplayer titles when taking part in with or towards folks in Oceania.

Google introduced its Umoja cable route between Kenya and Australia in May 2024. The route runs over land to South Africa’s coast, from the place a direct undersea cable will hyperlink to Australia.

To date, Google has shared only a few particulars concerning the cable, other than a tough map of its format and a deliberate launch date in early 2026.

The cable’s price, coastal touchdown stations, and anticipated round-trip latency are an entire thriller. The firm and cable builder SubCom have additionally repeatedly did not touch upon media queries about this.

Google has no less than confirmed the entire size of the cable route will likely be 13,000km.

It will run from Nairobi in Kenya to Uganda earlier than going south by Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe earlier than reaching South Africa.

To calculate the theoretical one-way latency on an optic fibre cable between two areas, you’ll be able to take the space and divide it by 200,000, which is the velocity of sunshine in kilometres per second.

For the 8,000km distance between the 2 present fibre touchdown stations on South Africa’s east coast —Amanzimtoti and Mtunzini — and Perth on Australia’s west price, this works out to round 40ms.

The theoretical round-trip latency between South Africa and Australia ought to due to this fact be 80ms — on probably the most direct route.

However, when contemplating slight cable deviations based mostly on particular seafloor options and inherent telecommunications gear delays, it can probably be barely longer.

With a further overhead of 10ms to 30ms, a extra sensible round-trip latency can be 90ms to 110ms. Moving over to the west coast of Australia might add one other 40ms.

That would put the latency between South Africa and Australia between roughly 110ms and 150ms, relying on the particular location. That can be considerably higher than what’s at present on provide.

According to Wondernetwork, the common latencies between Johannesburg and Perth and Johannesburg and Sydney are at present round 340ms and 409ms.

All undersea fibre routes between South Africa and Australia at present journey by North or South America or transfer alongside the Asian shoreline.

South African avid gamers combating excessive latency

South African avid gamers taking part in aggressive multiplayer titles are sometimes annoyed with the dearth of native servers, even for some in style video games.

In many instances, the servers with the bottom latency are positioned within the United Kingdom or Europe. Round-trip latencies between South Africa and people nations are sometimes between 160ms and 200ms.

South Africans are at a giant drawback, particularly in first-person shooters, the place fast reactions can imply the distinction between digital life and dying.

Although South Africa has roughly 26.5 million avid gamers, the overwhelming majority of those are taking part in on cellular gadgets. PC and console avid gamers solely account for about 4 million avid gamers.

With avid gamers cut up throughout many titles, solely the preferred video games get native servers. Battle royale video games are sometimes excluded as a result of they require numerous gamers to refill a foyer.

Australia has servers for extra video games than South Africa. This is smart when contemplating its a lot bigger console and PC gaming market.

According to the Australia Plays 2023 research, roughly 4 in each 5 Australians play video video games. 81% of households with avid gamers have a online game console, whereas 59% have a gaming PC.

In addition to offering South African avid gamers with entry to lower-latency servers than when they’re linked to the UK or Europe, family and friends members taking part in throughout the Indian Ocean could have a greater expertise.

Australia and its neighbour, New Zealand, are in style emigration locations for South Africans. New Zealand had the fifth-largest South African diaspora, at 95,577 by 2023.

As of 2024, roughly 224,160 South Africans had been residing in Australia. The solely nation with extra expats was the UK.

When taking part in with customers on the Australian west coast, servers in Asia have a tendency to supply the most effective stability of latency to each areas.

On the East coast, customers in each nations should hook up with servers in North or South America for the perfect mid-way latency stops.

In each instances, the very best round-trip latencies to the servers are between 200ms and 300ms, which makes for a near-unplayable expertise in video games requiring quick response occasions.

It must be famous that accessing the lower-latency connection between South Africa and Australia would require utilizing an Internet service supplier (ISPs) that leases capability on Umoja.