Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for a 21-day total lockdown in an effort to combat the spread of COVID-19, the heads of digital entertainment and social media companies held a virtual meeting to discuss issues related to the surge in internet consumption, streaming quality and telecom infrastructure.
Throughout Tuesday, 24 March, several video streaming platforms announced that they would be reducing bitrates for videos and disable high definition streaming in order to manage bandwidth and demand.
This includes entertainment platforms like Hotstar, Netflix , YouTube and Facebook among others.
According to a press statement on behalf of all the attendees, “The digital industry is acutely aware of this challenge and is committed to ensuring that all citizens are able to access mobile networks wherever and whenever they want.”
According to the statement, a meeting was organised on Tuesday by Uday Shankar, chairman, Star & Disney India, with key stakeholders of the digital industry.
The meeting, held virtually, was attended by NP Singh (Sony), Sanjay Gupta (Google), Ajit Mohan (Facebook), Sudhanshu Vats (Viacom18), Gaurav Gandhi (Amazon Prime Video), Punit Goenka (Zee), Nikhil Gandhi (Tiktok), Ambika Khurana (Netflix), Karan Bedi (MX Player) and Varun Narang (Hotstar).
The statement added that all video streaming by the companies that attended the meeting will be lowered from Ultra-HD and HD to SD.
“It was unanimously agreed that as an exceptional measure, all companies will immediately adopt measures, including temporarily defaulting HD and ultra-HD streaming to SD content or offering only SD content, at bitrates no higher than 480p on cellular networks,” the statement added.
These voluntary measures are expected to be in effect until 14 April.
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