Due to the period of isolation respected by the populations affected by theCOVID-19 epidemic, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, an evident peak was found in the use of the internet in various European countries, including Italy. Precisely for this reason EU Commissioner Thierry Breton asked streaming sites to reduce their bandwidth usage during the crisis and Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video have immediately complied with the request.
Starting from Sunday, Facebook has also decided to respond to the request of the European Commission. The Zuckerberg company has indeed stated that temporarily reduce video streaming speeds on its platforms, so be it on Facebook Watch be on Instagramto reduce the burden on the Internet as millions of Europeans flocked online to find fun during long hours of isolation because of efforts to tackle the pandemic.
Millions of Europeans need network infrastructures for even the most sensitive professional operations: in addition to smart working, repeatedly urged by governments to avoid gatherings of people, many of the services for citizens are now only available online. In other words, we cannot afford a collapse of the networks as we have already witnessed (and continue to assist) within the congested online shopping services.
A Facebook spokesman said: "We are committed to working with our partners to manage any bandwidth limitations during this time of high demand, while ensuring that people are able to stay connected to Facebook apps and services."
Several technology companies are offering their assistance to the most affected countries. In recent days, among many others, Xiaomi has declared that it has provided the second load of masks to the Civil Protection of the Lombardy Region, as a support to the attempt to contrast to the new coronavirus. To date, over 59 thousand cases of coronavirus-infected patients in Italy have been confirmed, of which 46.6 thousand are currently active. 5,476 patients died, including over 3,400 in the Lombardy region alone. There have been nearly 350,000 infections worldwide.
