YouTube said it will reduce its streaming quality in the European Union to avoid straining the internet as thousands of people work from home due to the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters reports. This follows a similar pledge from Netflix, after the European Commissioner Thierry Breton urged streaming platforms to switch to SD over HD feeds to conserve bandwidth.
Breton spoke to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. YouTube said that so far it had only seen a few usage peaks, but decided to act to minimise stress on the system. As a result, all traffic in the EU will switch to standard definition by default, the company said in a statement.
Netflix earlier agreed to take similar measures, saying its efforts should reduce bandwidth used by around 25 percent.
Many European operators have reported increased internet traffic over the past week, due to more remote working and use of video services at home. However, most say it's voice traffic that has increased more above normal levels, resulting in interconnection constraints in some countries.
The European Commission and assembly of EU telecom regulators Berec said they had not found any difficulties among telecom networks in coping with the increased traffic. However, they are setting up a monitoring mechanism to ensure action can be taken quickly if problems do emerge in the coming period.
