Telkom Do Gaming: More than just uncapped ADSL

This year’s rAge (Really Awesome Gaming Expo) saw Telkom getting involved and providing the gaming community with a promising view of the future. Telkom is angling its presence towards acknowledging the gaming market and its thirst for quality bandwidth at an affordable price by offering a range of uncapped products. Steven White, Telkom Executive from Consumer and Retail Business, shed some insight onto Telkom’s relationship with rAge and the impact future of high-speed internet in SA for the gaming community.

At the expo, Telkom announced a whole suite of uncapped ADSL solutions specifically targeted for online gaming. Telkom claims it has noticed, through extensive research of industry trends and analysis of data usage patterns, that the majority of consumers would prioritise an increase in data volumes over an increase in data speeds. Below are the Packages on offer:

The Do Gaming packages, a part of the Do Broadband product set, will be targeted with “off-peak” gaming from home specifically in mind. As the Gamer is nocturnal by nature and will be minimally affected by these daytime restrictions with daytime restrictions not being applicable to the 4mbps accounts, it seems to be appropriate. The daytime bandwidth restrictions are therefore imposed to provide the consumer “pool” a fairer distribution of bandwidth. By this same token, should a pool of consumers be relatively light in its data consumption, White suggested that it stands to reason that if one was over the usual individual data quota or above the “Acceptable Use Policy”, they may not be subject to bandwidth throttling.

However the real benefit of these packages is that there is no throttling of bandwidth for local gaming servers or as White puts it “local uncapped bandwidth unleashed”. In other words, when connecting to your local gaming server (for example the new Battlefield 3 server which Mweb has confirmed to host) no restrictions or throttling will be in effect. Coincidently, a Battlefield 3 promo package was on offer exclusive to rAge visitors a copy of Battlefield 3 for PC, a 2 TB Hard drive and a 1mbps uncapped connection for R782 per month. Or as white describes “unleashed on the public”

White then went on to paint a picture of how Telkom and Do Gaming are intrinsically linked. Telkom has been involved with rAge for some years now and sees gaming as an important part of the market. White explains how Telkom wants to nurture the environment and realises that, “getting into content application such as gaming is very important for sustainability going forward, so [we] have to look after that portion of the market.” And these aren’t just words with Telkom by hosting gaming and regional gaming competitions where substantial prize money is up for grabs. For example, at this years rAge a total of R160 000 cash in the prize pool up for grabs, with additional cash bonuses given to gamers who have a Telkom account as appreciation for their loyal support.

Overall, Gamers should come out on top. Telkom has recognised the gaming community as a key market segment and is determined to meet their needs as well as ensuring that all consumers enjoy a quality online experience.