Facebook has said that it would temporarily reduce streaming rates for videos on its platform and also on Instagram in Europe to help alleviate any potential network congestion due to thousands of Europeans working from home due to the coronavirus outbreak.
“We are committed to working with our partners to manage any bandwidth constraints during this period of heavy demand, while also ensuring people are able to remain connected using Facebook apps and services,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement.
With most of the 1.3 billion-plus population locked inside the home, there is a high chance of a spike in internet consumption, mostly through multimedia streaming apps on mobile and computers.
If this lockdown continues for long, there is a serious chance of breakdown of telecommunication network, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has warned in a letter to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
COAI, which has members such as Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone-Idea, and associate partner ACT has also urged popular Over-The-Top (OTT) players –Netflix, Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, Sony Liv, Alt Balaji, and YouTube, among others to reduce the content quality from HD to SD so that it doesn’t burden the cellular network infrastructure.
The move by COAI comes just days after Thierry Breton, commissioner of the European Union Internal Market, made similar requests to the OTT players.
So far, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video have agreed to lower the video streaming bitrate for a period of 30 days in Europe. Even Facebook and Instagram too, have announced to cut down bitrate of the videos on their respective social media platforms. This initiative is expected to reduce around 25-percent load off the internet traffic in the European Union.
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