COVID-19: Hotstar, Netflix Asked To Temporarily Lower Video Quality

With people are joining the social distancing movement and start working at home amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Netflix, Hotstar as well as other streaming services are experiencing a significant rise in their traffic. And Indian ISPs aren’t happy with this.

It is reported that mobile service providers have asked for the intervention of the home ministry and the telecom department to request at least 12 major streaming platforms which include Netflix, Amazon, Hotstar, and Youtube to lower the quality of their videos to ease the pressure put on the network infrastructure.

Telecom industry body’s director-general, COAI, Rajan Mathews, said in an interview:

The carriers have asked the video streaming companies to temporarily remove HD streaming options as well as suspend pop-ups and video ads to ease network load. Some streaming platforms including MX Player and Netflix said that they have already been taking measures to reduce bandwidth consumption but at the same time doesn’t compromise the streaming’s quality. There’s no information about what others have in mind to deal with the situation.

This demand comes after Netflix and Youtube were ordered by the EU to lower the streaming quality of their videos in the region to prevent the Internet from crashing. Netflix claimed that this move would cut down the Internet traffic used by European users by up to 25%. It is unclear how this change will affect the quality of Netflix videos for users on this continent.

This decision of Netflix is to deal with the Internet infrastructure problem in Europe amid the COVID-19 outbreak. But since American users are also warned to stay at home, this situation is likely to happen again. According to data from research firm Sandvine, the streaming service now accounts for more than 12% of global download traffic.

>>> COVID-19: Netflix Lowers Video Quality To Save The Internet From Crashing