Game companies planning for up to 1TB-per-second bandwidth on ocean cables

It’s not news that esports is a global phenomenon. With its roots in StarCraft and PC bangs in South Korea and shooters and LAN parties in the United States in the 1990s, competitive gaming now has forecasts of hitting $11 billion or more in 2020 — and the reality may even be higher as more folks stay at home and play games during the coronavirus pandemic.

And that means game companies depend on telecoms such as Singtel to deliver the bandwidth needed to keep the likes of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, and PUBG Mobile online and humming under massive player loads. And this could mean making sure cell towers are working in Bangalore or that a fishing trawler didn’t damage any of the undersea fiberoptic lines stretching thousands of miles from California to Singapore.