In recent months, the world has been taken by surprise by the rise of the coronavirus (COVID-19). It took a few months for it to arrive in Brazil, and the damage done so far goes beyond the lives lost and the impact on the economy. COVID-19 is affecting the internet too.
The WHO (World Health Organization) has vehemently stated that the best way to combat the virus is through social isolation. In these circumstances, many people are spending practically all their time at home and resorting to tools that keep them entertained, be it Netflix, YouTube, social networks, games or other media. What many of these have in common, if not all of them, is that they require the use of the internet.
The sudden increase in internet usage is proving to be a stress test for the big telecoms companies. In Brazil, Globoplay recently announced a reduction in the quality of its movies available on its network as a way of preserving the integrity of the Brazilian internet and its own infrastructure, in an attempt to meet the sudden demand from users. CNN recently reported that there has been a 70% increase in data traffic in Italy, 40% in the United States and 30% in France, and these figures are likely to rise as people adopt a social isolation regime to combat the virus.
If for some reason you notice that a website or your download is slow, you should know that this could be strongly related to the Coronavirus (COVID-19). However, there is no time to panic about this, the important thing for all of us at the moment is to follow the guidelines of the WHO (World Health Organization) in order to combat the virus that has taken and affected so many lives.
Let’s hope that this difficult time passes soon, and that we can soon enjoy the full speed of the internet!
- Tags:
- coronavirus
- covid-19
