A few days ago, around fifteen European operators gave a huge rant against platforms such as Netflix or Youtube. The reason ? These last would drain a large part of online traffic, without ever making the slightest investment. On another register, it is what they were also criticized vis-à-vis the cinema.
Orange was one of these angry operators, and transmitted this fever to these French friends. It must be said that the latter have recently had no choice but to invest to meet the demand generated by these platforms. These are not no less than three billion euros that have been invested in the mobile network. Note that the video streams alone absorbed more than a third of this amount. So when we know that Netflix, Google, Facebook and Akamai (Disney) eat up almost two-thirds of the bandwidth in France, without ever putting their hands in their pockets, we can understand the discontent of the moment.
Not to mention that operators are currently surfing the environmental wave, proposing to reduce their impact on our planet. A decision that is not really compatible with the growing demand emerging for this kind of platform. But then what to do?
Well, according to the latest rumors from the hallway, the operators are in the process of developing a regulation charter. Within it, a rule is already debated: the ability to cap the resolution of streams to 480p on mobile. A higher resolution is considered unnecessary by some observers. Not to mention that it is expensive, environmentally speaking.
But 480p is not much, especially today. While it will still be possible to watch programs on these platforms, their quality will be seriously impaired. Suffice to say that your journeys in public transport may be much less appreciable … If this remains to be confirmed, such measures are likely. Remember, during the first lockdown, flows were limited to allow everyone to work without too much trouble.
