Following the request of the European Union’s Internal Market and Services Commissioner, Thierry Breton, Netflix will limit the streaming quality of its services in Europe in order to relax the strain on the communication networks.
The official Netflix announcement stated that “We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25% while also ensuring a good quality service for our members.”
In his call, made earlier this week, Breton urged Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to limit the streaming quality to SD (standard definition) due to the increasing demand as many people are working from home, using video chats to stay in touch with their loved ones and increasingly watching more streamed content.
“Streaming platforms, telecom operators and users, we all have a joint responsibility to take steps to ensure the smooth functioning of the internet during the battle against the virus propagation,” Breton said in his statement.
The limitations will be held for 30 days and will be applied, as for now, only in the European market.
Youtube has also joined Netflix and will set SD as the default quality for its European users. However, users will still be able to manually switch the quality to HD.
