Digital industry to switch to SD from HD streaming

Amid a surge in demand for internet services against the backdrop of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread and increase in work-from-home by companies, the digital industry has decided to ‘temporarily’ offer only standard definition (SD) streaming services till April 14.

Sources said data consumption lately has gone up by 15-20 per cent and consumption of high definition (HD) data requires 6-7 times higher bandwidth.

The move looks at the potential impact on the cellular network infrastructure caused by the unprecedented surge in mobile internet consumption as people are staying indoors, responding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for social distancing and 21-day lockdown.

The decision was taken at a meeting on Tuesday by Uday Shankar, chairman, Star & Disney India, and attended by key stakeholders from the digital industry.

The meeting, held virtually, was attended by N P Singh (Sony), Sanjay Gupta (Google), Ajit Mohan (Facebook), Sudhanshu Vats (Viacom18), Gaurav Gandhi (Amazon Prime Video), Punit Goenka (Zee), Nikhil Gandhi (Tiktok), Ambika Khurana (Netflix), Karan Bedi (MX Player), and Varun Narang (Hotstar).

The digital industry has decided to act immediately in the larger national and consumer interest and to ensure the robustness of the cellular network, an official statement said. The industry is acutely aware of this challenge and is committed to ensuring all citizens are able to access mobile networks wherever and whenever they want, the statement further added.

It was unanimously agreed that as an exceptional measure, all companies will immediately adopt measures, including temporarily defaulting HD and ultra-hd streaming to SD content or offering only SD content, at bitrates no higher than 480p on cellular networks. 480p is the shorthand name for a family of video display resolutions and is mainly used for many early plasma televisions.

Data consumption lately has gone up by 15-20 per cent and consumption of high-definition (HD) data requires 6-7 times higher bandwidth