The Internet Is Getting Overloaded. Netflix Limits Streaming In Europe To Preserve Bandwidth

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When you started working from home, you may have thought that your Internet was glitchy. Your kids may have been throwing fits at the Xbox because it kept skipping. You are not alone. The Internet is getting clogged because none of us want to be alone. We are all connecting at once through Zoom, Google Classroom, GoToWebinar, Live Instagram/Facebook/Twitter/YouTube, streaming videos on YouTube. Streaming shows on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+. Press conferences. So much streaming.

Netflix announced today (3/19/2020) that it will limit streaming in Europe. This has been a discussion for a while over there, as people are having trouble uploading and downloading content.

As reported by Deadline: “The European Union’s Internal Market and Services Commissioner, Thierry Breton, has called on streaming platforms such as Netflix and YouTube to take measures to prevent internet gridlock as the response to the coronavirus places additional strain on communications networks.”

More from the article: “In a call placed Wednesday, he urged Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to serve only standard-definition content to users in times of peak demand. With vast numbers of people now working from home, and using video chat and digital messages to stay in touch with friends and family, and as users increase their time spent on streaming platforms, Breton said streamers had a role to play in ensuring telecom operators weren’t overwhelmed.”

Please read the full article here, but please use these ideas to conserve and free up the Internet. The goal is to spread out our global usage of the Internet. We need the videos from you! From our teachers, our fitness studios, everyone who is doing creative things to try to stay in business digitally.

  • Try to check your social at certain times of the day. Not all day.

  • Maybe don’t make live videos all day. Maybe don’t watch the live videos. Every single person coming on there is contributing to bandwidth usage. I want everyone to make live videos so badly, but maybe we just need to limit it at certain times.

  • Music: If you stream music from Apple or Spotify or something, just go buy some albums from iTunes. Put a bunch of the CDs in your basement onto your computer (OK, that’s from my own to-do list because I’ve never been a music streamer… I never trusted the cloud! ‘Clouds can blow away,’ is what I always said, though I subscribe to a bunch of them…keep your subscriptions! We will emerge from this.)

  • Limit kid video playdates to certain times.

  • Having a lot of meetings on Zoom? Maybe tell your boss that you need to conserve teleconferencing bandwidth. GoToWebinar is already very slow at times (worked great when it worked, just took a while for it to start) and I have been hearing that downloading Zoom is taking a long time. Sorry, Boss!

  • Not sure if these work, but: close unused tabs in your browser and on your phone. Don’t use these and reminder placeholders anymore.

  • If a press conference is happening right now, maybe watch it later. Not live. (Or watch on regular TV instead of streaming.)

  • Get cable! I was never a cord-cutter. I always knew that streaming would get expensive because we’d be signing up for so many services! So get that cable box back, LOL! (But to be honest, I don’t know the technology of cable; it might all run on WiFi anyway at this point.)

  • Turn the TV off when you leave the room.

  • Close browser tabs when you’re done with them.