Bharti Airtel Cloud Gaming: 5G Makes a Lot Possible

In a press briefing on Thursday, Bharti Airtel cloud gaming was unveiled to the public. Notably, the telco said that its 5G network enables low-latency and high-speed applications required for such a move.

Bharti Airtel Cloud Gaming To Use Airtel's 5G Network

The briefing, featuring Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon, discussed how the telco has developed the network to go for cloud gaming. The briefing also featured two of India's top gamers, Mortal (Naman Mathur) and Mamba (Salman Ahmad), both of whom tested the feature. Also, the telco used the gaming technology from Blacknut, and invited the two gamers for a race on the popular mobile title, Asphalt 9. Therefore, the performance should be taken with a pinch of salt; Asphalt 9 isn't exactly the heaviest game out there.

Airtel also said that the mobile devices, running on trial 5G spectrum in Gurugram, got latencies as low as 10 ms.

The telco said that the gaming industry will explode after the 5G networks go live in the country. It projected the gaming industry to have over 500 million online gamers by FY22. Furthermore, the telco added that for everyone involved in gaming, India represents a $143 billion opportunity.

Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon said, "5G will be able to give you ultra-low latency experience", while talking about gaming over Airtel 5G. Talking about the specific use case of cloud gaming, Sekhon said that the telco will bring the games to India. That means that the telco has plans to heavily invest in data centers to have enough capacity to support games.

He added, “cloud gaming will be one of the biggest use cases of 5G thanks to the combination of high speed and low latency. After delivering India’s first 5G demo over a test network, we are thrilled to conduct this exciting 5G gaming session"

Sekhon further said, "this is just the beginning of an exciting digital future that Airtel will enable for its customers as we prepare to roll-out 5G in India".

What is Cloud Gaming?

Cloud gaming, also called gaming-as-a-service, entails playing games remotely; a gamer will play the game available on the cloud of the service provider, and delivered to the player's device, without using any of the hardware capacity of the player's device. It is not exactly a new idea; companies were experimenting with the concept since 2003.

5G might prove to be the missing piece for cloud gaming to actually be playable.

Most famously, Google has had its experience in "streaming games" on its Google Stadia. Granted, the idea was novel, but it was too ahead of its time and that was the reason for its failure. Basically, Google Stadia was the precursor of cloud gaming, as the tech giant used its data centers capacity to host games. Users could then, via the Stadia console, access and play these games without installing them.

However, the existing network capacity let users and company down alike. For the users, the latency was far too high for Stadia to be a meaningful investment. For the company, well, Google ended up closing Stadia on February 1, 2021. Stadia is still operational; it isn't adding new games anymore.

Airtel has the experience of Google to look at, and more importantly, a far better network with its 5G.

Till now, the biggest criticism of cloud gaming has been the poor Quality of Service. Most of the cloud gaming servers have been, historically, situated in geographically-distant places. This added to the latency, leaving games virtually unplayable. Airtel seeks to address that with its cloud gaming offering.

User Testimonials on Bharti Airtel Cloud Gaming

The two gamers, Mortal and MAMBA, gave glowing responses when asked about user experience.

Naman Mathur, who goes by the name Mortal in gaming circles, said that the network was "amazing". He specifically mentioned that the game wasn't downloaded on the phone, but the phone was accessing the game, installed over the cloud, via Airtel 5G. Mathur said that he faced "no lag", got "low latency" and "amazing" ping while playing the game.

Mathur also talked about his career, saying that cloud gaming will allow more and more people to take it up.

Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon asked MAMBA, or Salman Ahmad, about how big the industry can be. Ahmad said that cloud gaming will "sort out performance and storage issues". Referring to the lower-end devices, he said that while some devices did not have the hardware to play these games, Bharti Airtel cloud gaming enables that.

He said that this will "come as a revolution in mobile gaming field". Ahmad further added that since high-end devices still remain out of reach for many, this move will boost gaming a lot.

As the telco predicted, the gaming industry will experience a boost off the back of 5G rollout in the country. India will have over 500 million online gamers come 2023. 5G can make gaming a lucrative career for many; cloud gaming will open the avenues to people who don't have access to the high-end hardware to run the best games.

How Will Bharti Airtel Cloud Gaming Work?

Sekhon dwelled upon the details of the mechanics of cloud gaming, particularly how the telco will enable it. He said that it was impossible for them to offer ultra low-latency to players from a centralized position; games have to get closer to the edge. For that, the telco will most likely plan partnerships with major game publishers to do that. However, a question asked during the briefing went unanswered regarding the same.

He also noted that while the mid-band spectrum does a good enough job to support cloud gaming, they would rather have the mmWave spectrum, given the band's much better capacity, at the expense of range.

The fact that Indian telcos need a balanced portfolio of spectrum remains rather understated. However, as new use cases develop, the fact will become all the more apparent.

Since the telco has been working on its 5G network to base it on the Open RAN architecture, it has the incentive already to develop its data centers business. This way, the telco can leverage the already-established data centers capacity, while expanding as and when required.

Airtel will hope to bring AAA titles to the platform, to make the platform more lucrative to aspiring gamers. The telco will have ensure the same to gain customers early on after the launch. This is a very particular use case for 5G; it demands the similar "high speed, low latency" aspects, but it also demands the telco to have enough data centers capacity to support the higher demand on the network.

For Bharti Airtel, this is a typical "why not" situation; the telco is already building data centers capacity, and this seems like a smart way to better monetize that asset.

5G - Jack of All Trades

It is rather redundant to repeat the fact that 5G is going to be fast. However, the next generation of mobile networks has really fueled some of the most creative use cases among all generations. Cloud gaming was something that remained a stuff of pipe dreams for the majority of its existence. Even though some companies got around to implementing it, they did so rather failingly. Why?

The answer is simple: not fast enough. Not capable enough. Not flexible enough.

Sekhon mentioned a really interesting application of access being closer to the edge. He said that Airtel was working on a way to allow users to customize their streaming experience. As an example, he said that when streaming a cricket match, users can have the ability to choose the view they want. That means, if a user wants a broadcast view, they can have that, and if a person wants the pitch-side view, they can have that.

5G and its virtualized network functions can tap in the vast amount of data at the edge. The telco can take the data as feedback, use machine learning to train its network to make automated decisions based on the use case.

Saying that 5G makes a lot possible is selling it really short.