Vodacom was the first South African cellular provider to launch commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) services in October 2012. We decided that it was time to put the service to the gaming test, and I did so with a couple of my favourite games.

Heroes of Newerth, a fast-paced strategy game where reactions and timing are important, was played on European servers to test international capabilities. Battlefield 3, a modern-combat FPS that demands lightning fast reactions from both gamer and internet connection, was played on local servers to test the legitimacy of LTE as an ADSL replacement for gaming.

The main considerations for gaming over any Internet connection are download and upload throughput (which can be demanding in modern games), and connection latency (the round-trip time of a data packet from your gaming battle-station, to the gaming server, and back again).

Three months on from their LTE launch, and Vodacom has over 500 LTE sites across the country – Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, and Cape Town with sites in the CBD, Stellenbosch, Atlantic Seaboard (including Camps Bay), the Waterfront and Century City. Interested users can check coverage using this tool – Vodacom LTE coverage map.

To make use of LTE services, Vodacom customers need an LTE capable modem or device. Data costs are the same as existing rates.

Vodacom LTE download / upload speeds

Vodacom states that most users will experience speeds of around 10Mbps down, and this proved correct based on my tests. These were performed from the Midrand area of Johannesburg.

The performance of any wireless broadband service is closely linked to signal strength, and when travelling around Johannesburg and using LTE at a few different locations, I experienced speeds as high as 16Mbps down and 7Mbps up.

Downloading the latest Linux distros using the BitTorrent protocol was impressive, with speeds surpassing 12Mbps.

Steam updates were similar, with download speeds reaching a peak of 12Mbps.

Vodacom LTE latency

Some general ping tests to local and international servers showed great latency results, with roughly 20ms latency to MyGaming.co.za, and roughly 200ms latency to a UK based website.

Pings sent from Johannesburg to South African Battlefield 3 servers gave results comparable to ADSL, with around 20ms latency to a Johannesburg-based server, and around 45ms to a Cape Town-based server.

Vodacom LTE used for games

When playing Heroes of Newerth (HoN) on Vodacom’s LTE service the experience was analogous to using a stable ADSL connection – indeed, unless informed otherwise, veteran HoN players may be hard-pressed to discern between the two types of service.

Despite the inherent latency of playing on a European gaming server, the gameplay was smooth with pings well within acceptable, playable bounds.

From my home location, I did experience the occasional lag-out as Vodacom’s LTE suffered a hiccup. It reminded me of the bad old days of playing WarCraft III DotA over the fledgling 3G services (albeit with far better pings on LTE). The signal did rectify itself within a few seconds, and the game did not drop its connection.

Battlefield 3 was also an interesting experience, with fantastic pings to both Johannesburg- and Cape Town-based servers, as illustrated in the servers screencap below. Again, this was similar to gaming on an ADSL connection, with the latency mostly remaining stable.

There were a few instances of rubber-band lag, but the real problem cropped up when the LTE signal dipped entirely – an intermittent situation that had me disconnecting from EA’s servers and also crashed my game. This also appeared to confuse Vodacom’s LTE connection software, which required a restart to get me back online.

Vodacom LTE for gaming – conclusion

Vodacom’s LTE service performed well when a strong signal was available, and the provider currently boasts the most extensive (and growing) LTE network in South Africa. However, it did suffer from the classic (although not catastrophic) ailments of gaming over a wireless connection, such as the occasional fluctuation in latency, and intermittent packet loss.

With a strong signal, Vodacom’s LTE will comfortably outperform HSPA+ and even 10Mbps ADSL connections when it comes to download and upload speeds, and closely match the latency experience on ADSL. Since wireless signal quality can vary drastically within very short distances, nothing will beat testing a connection in your own typical usage scenarios.

If you are a gamer still without an ADSL connection, LTE is shaping up to be a decent alternative under the right conditions – if you can stomach the comparatively expensive data costs.

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