Slow Internet Becomes A Challenge For Indonesian ESport Teams To Compete

Ilustrasi (Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The 'Mix Elite' Indonesian eSport national team had to experience bad luck in the Southeast Asia qualifying round at the IESF World Championship 2020. Because of the bad internet network, they were declared a walkout (WO) against the Philippines.

Even the athletes who are members of the DOTA 2 national team had time to find the nearest internet cafe (cafe) to continue the game. The incident occurred when Muhammad Rizky (IYD), Rudy Lucky (USAGI), Ramzi Bayhaki (Gracia), Tri Kuncoro (Jhocam), and Muhammad Luthfi (Azura), faced the Philippine eSport team on November 9, 2020.

Network disruption for the Indonesian eSport National Team, WO

As a result, the Indonesian eSport national team was considered absent because it was considered to have passed the agreed match time, at 14.30 WIB. The jury and match caster were forced to announce the Philippines eSport Team DOTA 2 won WO.

"Sorry for the internet constraints in the field, the children had difficulty entering the lobby so that they were late and were WO's in the match against PH," wrote IESPA in his Facebook comment column.

With this failure, the DOTA 2 Indonesian national team must maximize the remaining three matches. Where they have to collect as many points as possible from the following matches, against Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Uneven Internet Quality

On the other hand, VOI spoke with the Director General of SDPPI of the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Kominfo), Ismail. At that time, we asked about the uneven quality of streaming and internet in Indonesia.

Even on the island of Java, streaming quality in a good category can only be enjoyed in Bekasi City. This is actually surprising, because the majority of the population accessing internet services is in big cities such as DKI Jakarta, Bandung or Surabaya.

"So, the quality is proportional to the number of users, so if the users have different capacities, fewer users will be of higher quality," said Ismail.

He explained that the internet network in Indonesia was completely evenly distributed. It's just that the quality of the internet and streaming services will drop dramatically when many users access one network and it overloads data capacity and lowers its quality.

Others, Kominfo is always open and responds to complaints from the public regarding the quality of the internet network in Indonesia. Where later, Kominfo will ask for evaluation from each operator to follow up on the problem.

"So the report is annual, if there is an evaluation result that shows a decrease in quality, we will ask for additional capacity from the operator," explained Ismail.

Slow Internet?

Talking about internet speed, according to the notes of The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Indonesia's internet speed is still below the average internet speed in Asia.

They noted that the average download speed in Indonesia is 14 Mbps. This figure is still far from the average download speed in Asia, which is 30.9 Mbps. Meanwhile, Indonesia's average upload speed is around 10.9 Mbps.

Of course, because playing competition games or eSports is very dependent on the internet network. This means that internet infrastructure is important not only when holding competitions, but also so that eSports can reach people throughout Indonesia.

However, if the internet infrastructure in Indonesia cannot reach various regions. It's not impossible that eSports fans and athletes will only be limited to big cities.