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Vaibhav Srivastava 
23 March 2020In a time when the entire world is fighting together against the Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) is facing other challenges. As the Indian government has already suspended metro, train as well as bus services among lockdowns of several districts in the country, COAI has seen a huge spike in the demand for online video streaming apps.
From east to west and north to south, the government has requested people to stay back at their homes to contain the spread of Coronavirus. The move may sound great to control the spread of this but it has increased the number of users accessing online video streaming platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and Hotstar among others. This is why telcos urge online streaming platforms to lower video quality to reduce network congestion.
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COAI has urged such companies to take necessary measures like temporarily switching from HD (hi-definition) to SD (standard definition) streaming, replacing high bandwidth-consuming pop-ups and advertisements with public awareness videos about the virus as YouTube did in Europe.
The association has recently urged to a dozen of streaming platforms that includes YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Zee5, Hotstar, Voot, Alt Balaji, Viuclip, Netflix, Sony Liv, SunNXT Hoichoi, and Voot asking for their cooperation for the usage of data communications services during this critical situation.
As per a report by PTI, COAI has written a letter to Telecom Secretary Anshu Prakash and said, “Due to lockdown/ quarantine measures in various parts of the country, a sudden surge in demand for online video streaming is also expected to rise substantially. During this crucial time, it is absolutely essential for the streaming platforms to cooperate with telecom providers so as to manage the traffic distribution patterns that are likely to strain the network infrastructure “at a time when it is needed for various critical requirements”.
Due to the global impact of the Coronavirus, most companies have asked their employees to do work from home as much as possible. In fact, understanding the situation, Google has announced to halt the upcoming release of Chrome and Chrome OS as the company doesn’t want to hamper the official work due to its latest release.
So, in a situation when everyone in the country is already suffering due to Coronavirus, Telcos urge online streaming platforms to lower video quality to reduce network congestion.
Also Read: Google is Halting Upcoming Releases of Chrome and Chrome OS
