Re: COVID-19 vs. peering wars

[Mark Tinka <mark.tinka () seacom mu>]

On 5/Apr/20 15:52, Radu-Adrian Feurdean wrote:

> There was not regulation for that.
> There were some politicians crying out and loud in the media that streaming platforms should reduce bit-rates. 
> Netflix took the opportunity to try (sooner than initially scheduled) new compression schemes/algorithms on their 
> platform. Further, they took the opportunity to say "everything is OK, the new stuff will be deployed full-scale 
> around Europe". In parallel, other streaming platforms took their measures, some of them as simple as "default is one 
> level lower" (720p instead of 1080p, or even 480p instead of 720p). That went as far as platforms that would never be 
> named explicitly by any "responsible" politician (like pornhub and sorts).
> Chances are the results of the "bitrate reduction" will end up in the US pretty soon. Netflix are also insisting on 
> the fact that it's not a quality reduction, just new compression allowing for lower bitrates over the wire.
>
> The French regulator is even very decent in this respect, the official message being : "situation is overall good, in 
> the rare cases and places where there are issues operators will do heir job to fix the issues".
>
> In general, there are no new issues, just probably more people realising the issues that already existed for some 
> time.

Curious - if anyone is actively monitoring streaming traffic trends,
have you seen a "decrease" in that graph even though you are sure the
same number of eyeballs (or even more) are online? Especially for those
VoD providers who are implementing new compression algorithms, and not
necessarily reducing resolution?

Mark.