This is a guest post from Antrix Gaming. Original post can be found on their website
Let’s take a tour about how much data/bandwidth video gaming uses and what networks to use when you’re in Ghana. This includes how much data they charge and people’s experience with using them.
The amount of data/bandwidth consumed by playing video games online depends primarily on the game engine. This consists of how the game was built; the coding and architecture used. Some secondary factors that contribute will be in-game settings, modes and whether or not the player chooses to stream the gameplay. Some secondary factors could affect data usage even more.
The average data usage per hour ranges between 30MB and 200MB requiring connection speeds up to 512Kbps. This dips further for most mobile games to about 1.09MB usage per day. These figures are exclusive of updates/patches released for various games from mobile through Playstation 4, Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch.
Update sizes could be as low as 12mb to as high as 40GB for Elder Scrolls on Playstation 4. Adding voice chat to your online gameplay can increase data usage to as much as 180MB for a high quality skype call every hour.
Playing and streaming/broadcasting your gameplay could cost you about 780Mb of data per hour (High Quality, Upload Only).
The Real Question – Which Network Works Best?
COMMUNITY REVIEWS:
“NAT Restrictions are annoying” – Whiplash (LAN Party GH)
“Data costs are way too high” – MultiMaN (LAN Party GH)
“I use Surfline for online gaming but i find it very inconsistent, on good days the connection is very good but on other days you just can’t game with it without you having to nag constantly in FIFA that your respond times are delayed and in FPS games such as BF1 you just have to deal with unregistered shots all day.” – xpDAghost3
“We need a stable network with dedicated bandwidth for smooth gaming. Fibre to the house is the best option in my opinion. That gives you a better bandwidth and a much stable connectivity. But I expect that to be a standard.” – Cedric (Fifa Fair Play – FFP Forum)
“I am not entirely sure why in this age networks are offering data packages below 1GB. Seeing a notification like you’ve been given 50Mb free to browse Facebook is just ridiculus in an age where everything is video centred and even cell phone cameras are taking pictures in 4K.” – Liam (AnTrix Playground)
Below are the rates for the telecom companies and data providers:
MTN Rates
Source: www.mtn.com.gh
| Data Bundle | Price (Gh¢) | Validity (Days) |
| 300MB | 10 | 30 |
| 1GB | 20 | 30 |
| 2.5GB | 40 | 30 |
| 4GB | 60 | 30 |
| 6GB | 80 | 30 |
| 10GB | 120 | 30 |
| 18GB | 200 | 30 |
| 20GB | 240 | 30 |
| 25GB | 300 | 30 |
| 30GB | 360 | 30 |
| 32GB | 400 | 30 |
| 35GB | 420 | 30 |
| 40GB | 480 | 30 |
| 50GB | 600 | 30 |
| 100GB | 800 | 30 |
TIGO
Source: WWW.TIGO.COM.GH
| Data Bundle | Price (Gh¢) | Validity (Days) |
| 2GB | 2.99 | 4HRS (12AM – 4 AM) |
| 20MB | 0.5 | 1 |
| 50MB | 1 | 1 |
| 200MB | 3 | 1 |
| 450MB | 5 | 1 |
| 150MB | 3 | 3 |
| 25MB | 1 | 7 |
| 120MB | 3 | 7 |
| 400MB | 5 | 7 |
| 750MB | 10 | 15 |
| 1.2GB | 15 | 15 |
| 250MB | 5 | 30 |
| 500MB | 10 | 30 |
| 800MB | 15 | 30 |
| 3GB | 30 | 30 |
| 6.5GB | 60 | 30 |
| 9GB | 75 | 30 |
| 15GB | 120 | 45 |
| 30GB | 200 | 45 |
| 60GB | 250 | 60 |
| 100GB | 300 | 90 |
| 200GB | 350 | 90 |
Surfline
SOURCE: WWW.SURFLINEGH.COM
| Data Bundle | Price (Gh¢) | Validity(Days) |
| 1.5GB | 20 | 15 |
| 5GB | 35 | 30 |
| 12GB | 75 | 30 |
| 25GB | 140 | 30 |
| 50GB | 250 | 60 |
| 100GB | 399 | 90 |
Vodafone Fixed Broadband
SOURCE: WWW.VODAFONE.COM
| Data Bundle | Price (Gh¢) | Validity(Days) |
| 20GB | 85 | 30 |
| 40GB | 125 | 30 |
| 80GB | 180 | 30 |
| 200 | 250 | 30 |
| 500GB | 400 | 30 |
Busy Internet
SOURCE: WWW.BUSY.COM.GH
| Data Bundle | Price (Gh¢) | Validity(Days) |
| 250MB | 5 | 7 |
| 500MB | 12 | 7 |
| 1GB | 19 | 30 |
| 2GB | 30 | 30 |
| 5GB | 65 | 60 |
| 10GB | 120 | 30 |
| 25GB | 225 | 30 |
| 50GB | 299 | 30 |
| 100GB | 399 | 30 |
Airtel
SOURCE: WWW.AIRTEL.COM.GH
| Data Bundle | Price (GH¢) | Validity (Days) | Volume of 2x (MB) |
| 10MB | 0.5 | 1 | 10 |
| 20MB | 0.85 | 1 | 20 |
| 30MB | 1 | 5 | 60 |
| 50MB | 1.5 | 7 | 100 |
| 100MB | 3 | 15 | 200 |
| 200MB | 5 | 20 | 400 |
| 750MB | 15 | 30 | 1500 |
| 2GB | 30 | 30 | 4096 |
| 5GB | 60 | 30 | 10240 |
| 6GB | 75 | 90 | 12288 |
| 12GB | 150 | 90 | 24576 |
The range for the networks provided above is from as low as 10Mb at 50 pesewas to as high as 500 GB for 400 Cedis and 100 GB for 800 Cedis.
One of the biggest challenge is the fact that it’s impossible to play certain games like FIFA online with friends due to network restrictions if you’re not on a broadband connection. In other words it works only with Vodafone fixed line broadband.
Guest post was written by William Nkansa Ofori of Antrix Gaming You can read more about Antrix Gaming on their website and find out their gaming events or much more.
