The Body of the European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) and the European Commission have issued a joint statement on how they intend to cope with the increased load on the telecom network during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The two organisations are setting up a special process to monitor the situation and respond to any pressures on supply that emerge.
In the joint statement, BEREC Chair Dan Sjöblom said: “We are currently not seeing any major congestion problems and network operators seem to be coping well with the higher traffic load in the networks. But we nevertheless need to stay vigilant and be ready for if the situation changes. This is an extreme and unprecedented situation we are witnessing and we have seen over the past couple of days just how quickly things can change.”
Monitoring will be conducted on a national basis through a reporting system that will look at how traffic on the networks develop and the user experience.
Earlier this week, Netflix, Amazon and YouTube all agreed to reduce the pressure on networks by switching from high definition to standard definition picture quality.
