The South African Internet problem that 500 Mbps fibre cannot solve
I have an uncapped 500 Mbps fibre package from one of South Africa’s top ISPs, running on one of the country’s best fibre networks.
Unfortunately, it still suffers from a problem that all South African internet users cannot escape: latency.
Latency is how long it takes for a data packet to travel from its source to its destination. A simple example is data being sent from a company’s server to your PC.
If the server is in Pretoria and you live in Johannesburg, it will take a few milliseconds to reach your PC. If the server is in Cape Town and you live in Johannesburg, it will take a bit longer, around 20ms.
The farther you are geographically from the data source, the longer it takes for the data to reach you, increasing your latency.
This is because data packets over a fibre line are limited by the speed of light, which puts South Africans in a unique position, given the country’s geographic distance from global hubs.
Compounding the matter is that the main fibre cables which connect South Africa to the rest of the world do not travel as the crow flies, and are laid to connect multiple countries along their routes.
The ACE subsea cable linking France to South Africa, for example, is 17,000 km long, running along the west coast of Africa.
As a result, when you connect to a server in Europe, your latency immediately increases to at least 150ms.
Connecting to a server in the US from South Africa is even worse, with latency increasing to well over 200ms. In practical terms, this means South Africans may be limited in how they work or play online.
A recent example impacting South African PC gamers is the decision by the developers of popular online first-person shooter Wardogs to implement a ping limit on their official servers.
The new Wardogs ping limit is 175 ms, meaning that if your latency exceeds this threshold, you cannot play on the official servers.
Even 1Gbps speeds can’t fix lag
South African players joining the game’s European servers consistently experience 180ms of latency, effectively cutting them off from the game.
As Wardogs does not have official servers deployed in South Africa, many South African gamers took to Steam and Reddit to complain.
This reinforced the fact that the speed of your connection cannot do much to offset the effects of latency from South Africa.
Fortunately, there are many passionate South African gamers, some of whom started local community servers for Wardogs using their own time and money to keep the game accessible.
The ping on these local servers is around 40ms and provides a much better overall experience than on the official European servers.
If the developers of Wardogs reverse their decision on the ping limit and allow South Africans to join international servers, local gamers will still face suboptimal gameplay due to high latency.
Each time you input an action into a game — such as making your character run, shoot, or jump — this command has to travel from your PC to the game server.
If your latency is high, your inputs take longer to reach the server, which can make the game feel sluggish and unresponsive. This is referred to as “lag”.
Even if you have a 1Gbps connection and the best ISP on the best fibre network, the geographic location of South Africa makes latency to international servers a constant hurdle.
The ping limit is therefore a secondary issue, with the ultimate solution being the deployment of local Wardogs servers in South Africa.
This would ensure a better experience for everyone who plays Wardogs, which in turn would attract more people to try the game.
New data centres should be celebrated
Gaming is only a small part of what South Africans use the Internet for, and the impact of latency extends far beyond lag in your favourite FPS.
File downloads, content streaming, and video calls can all be negatively affected by latency. Fortunately, South Africa has a thriving and advanced ICT sector.
The increasing number of data centres being built in the country allows more international companies to host servers and points of presence in South Africa.
Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Solly Malatsi, recently stated that South Africa has the most data centres of any country in Africa.
Malatsi added that many data centre operators plan to expand their operations in South Africa, and policy certainty from his department has enabled multinationals to invest in more local data centres.
Teraco, South Africa’s largest data centre company, is a prime example of this. In 2022, it was announced that New York-based Digital Realty had completed its acquisition of a 55% stake in Teraco.
When the companies originally announced the deal, Digital Realty said the acquisition valued Teraco at R57.6 billion at the prevailing rand-dollar exchange rate.
Since then, Teraco has embarked on a major expansion in South Africa, building new data centres and expanding its existing facilities.
This not only brings money into the country and provides direct employment but also makes it easier for companies to launch and run locally hosted digital products and services, thus growing the digital economy.
For an average Internet user in South Africa, the impact is equally positive. Tech giants Microsoft and Google host their services locally, making them quicker and easier to access.
Entertainment is also boosted, with the likes of Netflix and Facebook delivering content from points of presence in the country.
For a country like South Africa, thousands of kilometres from Europe and the US, the benefits of expanding local data centre infrastructure are far-reaching and should be celebrated.
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