Companies that provide bandwidth to consumers have been lifting data caps, restrictions, and fees for millions of users who are working remotely or are simply locked down on quarantine as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But while that assists consumers coping with the remote environment, it does not address the attendant issue of the overall bandwidth available from service providers.
Last week, there were signal flares from significant companies such as Netflix, Facebook, and Cisco Systems Inc. regarding the demand for their services and how they are trying to deal with the increased demand.
“We’re just trying to keep the lights on over here,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week. On Monday, the company posted some data on the challenges they face.”Total messaging has increased more than 50% over the last month” in many countries where social distancing and shutdowns are in place to combat the spread of the virus. In some of the hardest-hit nations, Facebook has seen voice and video calling via Messenger and WhatsApp more than double.
In Italy, for example, the social media company’s network traffic has jumped by 70%, and conference calling is up by a whopping 1,000%.
And the scaling up continues across the globe, including in the United States.
“Maintaining stability throughout these spikes in usage is more challenging than usual now that most of our employees are working from home,” the company said. “We are working to keep our apps running smoothly while also prioritizing features such as our COVID-19 Information Center on Facebook as well as the World Health Organization’s Health Alert on WhatsApp.”
The focus on messaging apps in Facebook’s list of issues highlights a big problem across the industry. Cisco says its WebEx collaboration and online meeting service has seen usage skyrocket. “In the first 11 business days of March, we’ve had 5.5 billion meeting minutes,” Robbins said in a CNBC interview earlier this month. Usage has doubled from February, which had already experienced doubled volume.
Leading conference app Zoom has been seeing significant spikes in use since February, and CFO Kelly Steckelberg says the company has dropped the standard 40-minute time limit on free video conferencing. That has resulted in even higher demand.
Leisure products are likewise experiencing an enormous increase in usage. Google’s YouTube announced this week the platform would be temporarily reducing video quality from high definition to standard definition to preserve bandwidth. It was initially a change targeted at the European Union, but a spokesperson told Fox News that the company is going to “expand that change globally.”
Netflix, too, is limiting quality in some areas of the world to save bandwidth. “If you are particularly tuned into video quality, you may notice a very slight decrease in quality within each resolution,” Vice President of Content Delivery Ken Florance announced over the weekend. “But you will still get the video quality you paid for.”
And the strain on these services naturally is reflected in the usage by the service providers such as AT&T. The telecom company reported a 44% increase in wireless voice calls on Sunday compared to an average Sunday and an 88% increase in Wi-Fi calls. It saw a record spike in the usage of video streaming services such as Netflix on Saturday. Sprint and Verizon reported similar across-the-board spikes.
The effect of all this traffic, aside from the deliberate reduction of services from YouTube and Netflix in some areas, is noticeable. Ookla’s Speedtest released traffic tracking and trend data through March 23, which showed a “degradation of speeds” in countries across the globe. That includes countries in the EU and the U.S.
“Mean download speed over mobile and fixed broadband decreased in Canada and the U.S.” week over week, the company reports. However, the shift is not dramatic over months of significant usage, such as December’s shopping days.
Tech companies are adapting to these changes, or in some cases prepping for changes to come. And the increase in services is a noticeable sign of the new, if temporary, reality of a workforce away from the office. But there is in the tech industry a high degree of confidence that any end-user impact will ultimately be relatively small.
Not to say there aren’t other perhaps more ominous challenges. Online advertising bellwether Facebook has reported that, in addition to struggling with massive usage spikes and its shift to more work-at-home employees, online ad revenue, too, is decreasing in countries that have taken significant steps to control the virus.
The infrastructure may be sound, and the business models may be as well, but the current test of both at the same time has yet to play out to its conclusion, and at this point, there’s no certainty about how the industry will come out on the other side.
