Social media guru Facebook Inc. (FB) and media services production company Netflix Inc. (NFLX) announced they will be reducing amount of data their services consumes in India so as to ease network congestion in the country.
The companies claim to have taken this measure so as to reduce network congestion in the world’s second highest populated country where people are currently under lock-down hence the need for a faster home internet services.
For the next 30 days, Netflix says it will cut down its data traffic in India by 25% to help service producers in the country who are experiencing network outages from time to time.
Netflix had also taken similar moves in its European markets to compensate for slower internet services caused by a surge in active daily internet users.
In Asia Pacific where India lies, Netflix boats of 16 million paying users in the region, the company however failed to disclose the number of its subscribers in India.
On the other hand, Facebook says it will temporarily reduce picture quality and bit rates for videos on Facebook and Instagram respectively.
India is the world’s largest market for Facebook’s social media services in term of user numbers on their portfolios.
Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, announced a 21 day lock-down across the country to curtail spread of coronavirus on Tuesday .
Moments after the announcement, service providers were under pressure as people were using home networks to catch live updates about the corona situation online.
On Monday, Amazon Inc.’s (AMZN) Prime Video took a similar route when it announced lowering of bit rates in India. Another player in the Indian market Walt Disney Co (DIS) which controls video streaming platform Hotstar said it would take a similar measure when need arises.
