In a surprising result that no one expected, Australia’s gaming community has become more consumers of internet data than Netflix subscribers according to Optus and Telstra.
With many people locked down at in their homes, many have turned to entertainment at home which is mostly gaming and television since most other favourite past times like sport has also been cancelled.
Many games such as Fortnite, League of Legends and Call of Duty have a high bandwidth requirement, so much so that Communications Minister Paul Fletcher made a direct request to gaming companies to assist the NBN Co in managing the level of consumer demand.
According to Optus Vice President of Product, Development, TV and Content Clive Dickens, gaming network use is mammoth compared to everything else and people spent more time gaming than watching Netflix. Gaming is the fastest growing sector of media and entertainment according to PwC and is expected to be worth $4 billion this year.
With the new Playstation 5 and Xbox coming out during Christmas, demand is expected to increase even further into the new year.
Telstra and Optus are scrambling to ensure they are offering products that attract gamers to the their respective networks. Important for gamers are obviously aspects such as network bandwidth to ensure that they have a good ping during games.
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