Netflix and YouTube have decided to reduce video quality amid the Coronavirus crisis.
Multiple outlets report that the two streamers are moving to temporarily slow things down in Europe. In other words, they are set to reduce bandwidth used in Europe for at least the next month following unprecedented usage due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25% while also ensuring a good quality service for our members,” Netflix said in a statement.
“[W]e are making a commitment to temporarily switch all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default,” YouTube said in a statement. “While we have seen only a few usage peaks, we have measures in place to automatically adjust our system to use less network capacity.”
As of now, the decision to slow things down will not be applied outside of Europe.
