The internet should generally hold up under the load of a pandemic. But content providers say they’re taking extra precautions just to make sure.
As millions of Americans hunker down to slow the spread of COVID-19, gaming, teleconferencing, and video streaming are putting added stress on the internet. And while telecom executives tell Motherboard the U.S. internet will likely weather the storm, many content providers are taking extra precautions to make sure that’s true, Vice News reported.
Disney announced in a blog post that it would also be “instituting measures to lower our overall bandwidth utilization by at least 25%” across Europe. A company representative told Motherboard the company had no such plan for the United States at this time.
According to Vice News, when asked to comment, Microsoft would only direct Motherboard to an existing blog post by Xbox boss Phil Spencer that doesn’t really address the congestion issue. Sony did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. telecom provider Centurylink, which acquired tier 1 network operator Level 3 in 2017, told Motherboard it has seen a 35 percent overall increase in network traffic over the past two weeks, primarily in the areas of gaming and video.
