Despite our small stature, Wight punches well above its weight when it comes to online infrastructure. This is especially the case for wireless connections, for which we have better 4G than much of the mainland, and with 5G’s arrival, we’re moving even further ahead.
To illustrate this, we thought it would be an interesting challenge to put our internet to the test. Our approach to these tests was to engage in a subset of online games which are based on movies. This might or might not have had anything to do with major movie binge sessions recently, and our general curiosity as to how well these translate. Taking a look at some of the most major and common examples, here’s what we found.
On to Testing
Gaming and hiking are two big passions of ours, despite involving very different levels of physical activity. Combining these two, we hiked as far into the Newtown National Nature Reserve as we could, then went about our tests of how far we could push our much-touted 4G coverage. Separated into casino and video game action, our experiment garnered some interesting results.
Image source: Pexels
For traditional video games, we settled on the highly demanding streaming service Project xCloud. Offered by Microsoft and tied to Xbox Live, the idea of this type of gaming is effectively like Netflix or YouTube. We settled on World War Z as our game, a highly active and fast-paced shooter.
The result of this test was not encouraging, but that was largely expected. Game streaming services struggle on 4G at the best of times, so expecting it to work miles out in the country was a tough ask. While this problem might be mitigated when 5G arrives, we don’t know just how far out into the country it will eventually reach.
Following this, we moved onto casino gaming, which had far better results. To find our games, we simply signed up to the Speedyspel casino and turned to their slots to see what we could manage. Starting with Ted and moving onto The Goonies, we found that unlike our first experiment, this one worked flawlessly.
We even tried out some of the more data-demanding live casino games which, while admittedly not strictly movie-related, played surprisingly well. The reasons for this tie into bandwidth demands, which are far lower for any casino games than they’ll be for the likes of full traditional video game streaming systems.
What Does This Tell Us?
To be clear, we hesitate to apply our conclusions to the entirety of the Isle of Wight. That said, there some definite patterns illustrated within our testing conditions. The first is that, even in clear areas, highly demanding game streaming services simply aren’t there yet. This could change, but at the moment, playing games with high bandwidth and low latency requirements in nature isn’t yet viable.
The second pattern that we found is that, in our experience, it’s difficult to find places on Wight that don’t allow access to at least some forms of online gaming. True, this might be an unusual testing case, but the realities of these strong connections mean enormous benefits in other areas like communication and safety.
In other words, whether you’re looking to get specific as we did with movie games, or enjoy any other use of mobiles in the wild, chances are you are covered. We might not be there yet in terms of the most demanding uses, but for rural areas, we at Wight still place high among the national and international pack.
