With the new undersea fibre optic cable, which directly connects Latin America to Europe, and partner expertise, gamers on both continents will continents will play online matches with 30% less latency (data transmission latency (LAG) reduction of 30% during online games.
São Paulo and Dublin, 8th February 2022 – The long wait for the nearly 85 million Brazilian online gaming fans is over. EllaLink’s new fibre optic submarine cable, the first high-capacity cable to directly connect Latin America to Europe, is making its low latency connection (data transmission response time) between the two continents available so that Brazilian and European gamers can play online matches on equal terms, without delays and other technical connection limitations that ultimately decide a match.
The entry of EllaLink cable into the world of games is the result of a partnership with IP Telecom – which provides differentiated IP transit access to the main content servers spread across the European continent – and with NoPing, a high-performance solution for latency improvement focused on the online gaming segment.
Inaugurated in June, after a BRL 1 billion investment, the EllaLink cable has four pairs of optical fibres. Before, most of the connections between the two continents were made via the USA. The new direct route, of 6 thousand km under the Atlantic waters, between Fortaleza (Ceará) and Sines (Portugal), guarantees a connection of very high speed and performance (up to 100 terabits per second), with latency reduction concerning the previous route. In addition to online games, low latency benefits the performance of digital businesses, cloud services, electronic banking, and entertainment media.
The partners’ expertise brings together the decisive factors in an online match between Brazilians and Europeans: quality and fast connection at any point of the two continents to take advantage of the latency reduction in the new route offered by the EllaLink cable.
“This reduction in latency in the connection between Brazil and Europe, counted in milliseconds (ms), represents the biggest differential of our cable, but many people could not realize this gain in most applications,” explains Rafael Lozano, EllaLink’s Brazil manager. “In an online game, if we imagine two players, a Brazilian and a North American, playing on a European server, aiming at the same target at the same time, the differentiator between winning and losing will be who hits it first, and this is determined by latency, called LAG by gamers,” he adds. According to Lozano, with this new route, they will compete on an equal footing.
Lozano notes that until the partnership between EllaLink, IP Telecom and NoPing, latencies across continents were around 250ms between major game servers, and a gaming experience considered good should be below 150 ms. “With the EllaLink cable, this latency reduces to less than 120 ms between points of high traffic concentration in Europe,” he says.
In other words, from now on, gamers will notice the difference. In addition to the shorter direct route provided by EllaLink cable, IP Telecom will streamline data transmission from provider customers, using EllaLink’s connection hubs on both sides of the Atlantic – and also through European partners, will extend transmission to Sines, Lisbon, Madrid and Marseille, and in Brazil, from Fortaleza in Ceará to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
“IP Telecom has in its DNA the search for state-of-the-art connectivity. We are creating a watershed in Latin America by offering the lowest latency between Brazil and Europe. This provides the market with a new experience, said IP Telecom’s CEO, Jefferson Carvalho.
NoPing, in turn, will ensure that the connection has the lowest possible latency. This is because its solution works like an Internet GPS: the algorithm calculates all available routes and chooses the one that allows, simultaneously, the maximum reduction of latency, with packet loss and connection drop correction.
According to Marcos Kenickel Vasconcelos, CTO of NoPing, the partnership will open a new era for the company in the multibillion-dollar gaming market – a segment that moves around US$ 200 billion per year worldwide (more than the movie and music streaming market combined) and should invoice US$ 2.3 billion in Brazil in 2021, according to estimates by the specialized consultancy Newzoo.
“Breaking borders with the European continent was something we always dreamed of,” says Vasconcelos. “Now we will have hotly contested online championships between the two continents, which should expand the inclusion of Brazilian players in Europe,” he adds, referring to e-Sports gamers, as the professional version of online games is known, where NoPing has strong participation, bankrolling teams or offering services.
In terms of the online gaming audience, Brazil is third in the world, behind the USA and China. Besides several types of games that Brazil has already had world champion teams — Free Fire, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), Rainbow Six Siege –, the NoPing executive believes that the direct route with Europe will impact Brazilian gamers adept at Dota 2. “It is the game modality that the Europeans are strongest and also the one that distributed the highest prize pool of e-Sports in 2021, around US$47 million,” he says. To get an idea, the champion and runner-up of the last edition of football’s Copa Libertadores received US$22 million from Comenbol.
Vasconcelos says that the first matches between Brazilian and European gamers over EllaLink’s cable registered a drop in latency in the range of 30%. “This is for gamers connected in the Southeast Region. Players in the Northeast, because of the physical proximity to Europe, saw the latency drop by up to 50%,” he notes.
The excellent results led the company to schedule NoPing Day, an event that will bring together Dota 2 teams from both continents, in a challenge on February 18th.
This is just the beginning. EllaLink will connect a DataCenter in Cape Verde soon, which should impact on the increase of intercontinental play of popular online games. Then we will have a wave of African gamers joining the circuit,” predicts Vasconcelos.
About EllaLink
EllaLink is an advanced optical platform offering secure high-capacity connectivity on a unique low latency transatlantic route serving the growing needs of the Latin American and European markets. The EllaLink network directly connects Brazil and Europe, linking the major hubs of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza with Lisbon, Madrid and Marseille.
The EllaLink System has been built with state-of-the-art coherent technology initially offering 100Tbps of capacity over four direct fibre pairs between Europe and Brazil. EllaLink is a privately funded and independent company committed to providing products and services on a Carrier Neutral and Open Access basis. Marguerite II, a pan-European equity fund active in the renewables, energy, transport and digital infrastructure sectors, is the main shareholder of EllaLink.
For more information visit ella.link
Media contact:
Clara Casanova, [email protected]
