MWEB has been stirring things up in the local Internet market over the last year. They were the first to introduce affordable uncapped ADSL services back in March 2010, and more recently (November 2010), they made a stand on the high costs of local transit in South Africa preferring to enter into free and open peering agreements.
Despite the furore that arose around this move, MWEB has now secured deals for free and open peering between most major network providers including Internet Solutions, MTN Business, and Vodacom Business. Only the Telkom SAIX network has yet to bow to MWEB’s peering pressure.
The peering war of November 2010 was a time of uncertainty for gamers, with MWEB customers wondering how their latencies would be affected.
Now that peering agreements have been struck between three of the four major network providers, the MWEB ISP gaming division looks to be turning their sights to bolstering their service appeal for the gaming community; likely an attempt to convert this important segment of the market to their Internet service.
MWEB has recently advertised a position for an ‘Online Gaming Manager’ giving us a hint as to their plans. Some key elements of the job speak of a new ‘MWEB gaming strategy and the implementation thereof,’ ‘content implementation for MWEB gaming sites (web and mobile),’ and mention of ‘gaming products and services.’
Derek Hershaw, CEO of MWEB ISP, discussed how MWEB will be expanding into the online gaming space.
“We’ve definitely identified online gaming as a key part of our strategy going forward, with a focus on MMOG [(massive multiplayer online gaming)] rather than casual gaming. And now that we have a much bigger portion of the end-to-end access layer under our own control, we’re in a better position to manage and support the customer experience,” said Hershaw.
The end-to-end access layer speaks of the equipment used to transmit data traffic. With this section of a network under their control, MWEB can reduce third party costs and interferences.
Hershaw discussed some of the steps that MWEB has taken to bolster their online gaming service offering.
“The launch of affordable Uncapped ADSL has and will continue to play a significant role,” said Hershaw. This is indeed true, as an uncapped connection opens up a world of fixed cost opportunities for both PC and console gamers.
“The fact that [MWEB now has] a 2-node IPC network [(Cape Town and Johannesburg)] has also helped tremendously in terms of reducing latency (the closer the aggregation points are to the customer the better),” explained Hershaw. Previously, Cape Town based MWEB users would have to make a data round-trip to Johannesburg and back. The implementation of an IPC node in Cape Town has improved the latency for Cape Town users.
“We are hosting (exclusively) COD Black Ops in our CT and JHB data centres, and we plan to add even more titles in the very near future. We have just deployed our own Steam servers in CT and JHB,” said Hershaw.
The addition of Steam content mirrors to the MWEB network is great news for those using MWEB ISP, as this means that Steam data content will be served from a local source, reducing download and response times. It will also reduce the costs incurred by MWEB for traffic utilised on international undersea cables, hopefully reducing service costs to the end-user in the long run.
When asked about the possibility for gamer specific products which may feature services such as prioritised gaming traffic, Hershaw said: “I think that if we can continue to bring popular titles onto our own network – hosted locally – then we won’t need to look at traffic prioritisation and gamer specific products. Our standard uncapped ADSL products will give our customers a great experience – that’s what we want to achieve.”
Speaking of plans to overhaul the current MWEB Gamezone portal Hershaw said: “We have plans in place to overhaul the site. Not only in terms of gaming specific content but also the levels of engagement we have with our customers and that they have amongst themselves.”
“Gaming is a social experience and the site has to lend itself to that. It won’t necessarily be a big-bang approach but gradually over the next few months we’ll start to introduce new features [and] services,” Hershaw concluded.
Does MWEB have what it takes to attract more gamers to their Internet service? << Share your thoughts on the MyGaming forum.
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