Netflix, Disney+, YouTube throttle Europe's streaming due to coronavirus

UPDATE: March 21, 2020, 3:24 p.m. EDT Disney+ has joined the fray, saying it will throttle European bandwidth by 25 percent for 30 days after its March 24 launch, per Deadline. Its French launch has also been delayed until April 7.

Original story:

Movie and TV aficionados should get used to reduced image quality on their favorite streaming service, at least for a little while.

Amazon and YouTube both confirmedon Friday that they would be reducing video stream quality in the EU to ensure there aren’t bandwidth issues during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are making a commitment to temporarily switch all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default,” said a YouTube spokesperson in a statement.

Both of these companies join Netflix, which announced yesterday that it would be cutting quality in the EU as well. As a giant in the streaming video industry and a major source of internet traffic around the globe, Netflix committedto cutting its bandwidth by 25 percent. The company said it was reducing video bitrates, thus lowering streaming quality, to do this.

“We support the need for careful management of telecom services to ensure they can handle the increased internet demand, with so many people now at home full-time due to Covid-19,” said an Amazon spokesperson in a statement. “Prime Video is working with local authorities and internet service providers where needed to help mitigate any network congestion, including in Europe, where we’ve already begun the effort to reduce streaming bitrates while maintaining a quality streaming experience for our customers.”

All three streaming services are making these changes immediately in the EU following a requestfrom European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Thierry Breton. However, it should be noted that Amazon’s statement makes it clear that the company is ready to reduce quality in other regions around the world should the need arise.

Video streaming platforms such as YouTube, Amazon’s Prime Video, and Netflix have become a major source of entertainment as people around the world hunker down in their homes in order to practice social distancing and contain the spread of the virus. Nielsen estimatesthat the crisis “can lead to almost a 60 percent increase in the amount of content we watch in some cases and potentially more depending on the reasons.”

A previous study conductedin 2018 found that Netflix alone accounted for 15 percent of all internet traffic worldwide.

Netflix announcedat the beginning of the year that it has more than 167 million subscribers around the world. Last month, Amazon sharedthat it had more than 150 million global Prime subscribers. Each Prime subscription comes with the Prime Video service. YouTube boastsmore than 2 billion logged in users per month, who watch more than a billion hours of video each day.

With streaming services already taking up so much bandwidth, the fear that the increase in usage could affect the internet from running smoothly is certainly well founded. Amazon, YouTube, and Netflix are hoping to alleviate those worries with this action.