From Candy Crush to League of Legends, Latin America’s appetite for online gaming is growing at a dizzying pace.
According to Newzoo, more than 250 billion people played mobile video games in the region in 2021, accounting for around half of the total revenue of the Latin American video game market.
The region’s esports industry has also begun to accelerate in recent years, a trend accentuated by virtual tournaments that attract tens or hundreds of thousands of viewers.
Participation in digital gaming and its real-time streaming is putting pressure on the region’s network infrastructure, which must be able to meet the growing demand for high-speed, low-latency Internet services.
Mobile gamers rely on access to cellular data or WiFi to solve mysteries and build empires on their smartphones.
Esports players also need fast, seamless broadband connectivity to ensure a great, lag-free gaming experience.
The telecommunications sector plays a key role in this burgeoning market, providing the routers, cables, cell towers, and all the network infrastructure technologies that allow people to access gaming servers and interact with other players around the world.
This infrastructure will become even more crucial in the coming years as demand for Internet and mobile telephony continues to grow in Latin America.
International bandwidth usage in the region is projected to increase from nearly 200 Tb/s in 2022 to around 700 Tb/s in 2026, representing a combined annual growth rate of 36 per cent, according to TeleGeography.
Internet usage in Latin America is increasing rapidly as the region addresses its digital connectivity issues, including limited access to fixed and mobile broadband, high service fees and power outages.
Increased Internet access is helping to fuel the boom in video games.
Newzoo predicts mobile gaming revenue in Latin America will grow from $3.5 billion in 2021 to $5.1 billion in 2024.
The esports industry is also gaining traction, driven by the popularity of competitive online video games such as League of Legends, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
The IEM Rio Major 2022 tournament, a CS: GO championship hosted by the game developer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, reached a peak viewership of over 1.4 million online viewers in November.
Both esports and mobile gaming are more complex and immersive than ever, requiring high-capacity, low-latency internet connections to deliver seamless gameplay.
Latency, the time it takes for data to travel from a device to a server and back, is a crucial issue in esports, where a delay of milliseconds can mean defeat at the hands of an enemy in the blink of an eye.
Major live-streamed esports tournaments also push the limits of network infrastructure, using massive amounts of bandwidth and bulletproof connections to host virtual battles and deliver high-definition audio and video to millions of viewers around the world.
The rise of cloud gaming in Latin America – including the launch of Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming in Brazil and Mexico in 2021 – will require highly optimized networks to support bi-directional data flows between gamers and data centres to enable a seamless experience.
Telecom providers are taking steps to build reliable and scalable networks that better serve the region’s growing population of gaming enthusiasts.
Cutting-edge technologies can help boost speed and performance. WaveLogic 6 , the next generation of Ciena’s coherent optical technology, provides ubiquitous 800G connectivity and unprecedented wavelength capacity of up to 1.6 Tb/s, enabling networks to deliver massive amounts of bandwidth to the end user in an automated and flexible manner.
While innovative network solutions can improve the experience for a growing cohort of desktop gamers, advances in cellular technology are poised to drive the region’s mobile gaming market more significantly.
The deployment of the 5G wireless standard in Latin America will result in much faster downloads and lower latency times than current 3G and 4G networks can support.
Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to have nearly 400 million 5G connections by 2027, up from 22 million by the end of 2022, according to data from Omdia and 5G Americas.
In larger markets like Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, 5G will enable improvements in mobile gaming that will drive higher fidelity gaming, better multiplayer experiences and more competitive mobile esports, Newzoo predicts.
As gamers across the region pull out their phones and fire up their computers to travel across virtual lands or battle waves of minions, Latin America’s network requirements will continue to rise. For the telecommunications sector, which supplies the hardware, software and solutions essential to making it all happen, it’s time to game!