Netflix Australia has announced that it will be reducing the amount of data used by streams in Australia by 25% for 30 days to assist broadband and mobile networks while they adjust to increased numbers of people working from home due to COVID-19 shutdowns.
Implementation will commence overnight Wednesday March 25th and the impact on the networks will be seen over the next few days.
Ken Florance, VP Content Delivery told Ausdroid:
Given the crisis, we’ve developed a way to reduce Netflix’s traffic on telecommunications networks by 25% while also maintaining the quality of our service.
consumers should continue to get the quality that comes with their plan – whether it’s Ultra-High, High or Standard Definition.
We believe that this will provide significant relief to congested networks and will be deploying it in Australia for the next 30 days.
This is a clever solution and more user friendly than Youtube’s decision to reduce all streams to 480p temporarily.
If you’re catching up on some Netflix over the next few days, let us know if you can see a difference, either in the network usage to your place, or in the video quality you see.
