Indian telcos request OTT services like Netflix, Prime Video, Hotstar, YouTube, and others to reduce the burden on their infrastructure networks. They are appealing this so that they can offer stable services to healthcare, banking, education, businesses, and others amid lockdown across India due to coronavirus outbreak.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) which comprises of the country’s telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea has requested the popular video streaming services in the country to temporarily offer SD playback over HD and above quality for a certain period of time till the lockdown persists. The association has also asked them to avoid feeding high-bandwidth consuming advertisements and pop-ups to users.
Rajan Mathews, the director-general of the Association told Economic Times that they have appealed Department of Telecommunications (DoT) as well as Home Ministry to urge ‘video streaming service providers/broadcasters’ to manage their traffic distribution pattern in a way that they don’t stress the networks of telcos. By this, the network infrastructure can be used for other critical needs such as healthcare, online/digital education, digital banking transactions, and other important purposes.
Almost all the streaming services have already started taking steps to avoid using more bandwidth without compromising on the quality of the stream by using their proprietary software and algorithm. However, we are not sure whether or not they will limit playback to SD quality like the popular international services such as Netflix and Prime Video have done in other markets.
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