General mobilization continues to avoid bringing down the French Internet network. Facebook and Amazon are preparing to announce the reduction in their speed in order to reduce the pressure on French telecom operators. The latter, through the voice of Stéphane Richard, the CEO of Orange, have warned the large American platforms against the risk of network congestion.
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Since the start of the containment, video streaming platforms Netflix and YouTube (a subsidiary of Google), very popular in France, have announced similar measures. Saturday, under pressure from the government and telecom operators, the Disney + video streaming site agreed to postpone its launch in France from March 24 to April 7 in order to allow time to adapt Internet capacities.
Today, it's the Facebook group's turn to act. In addition to the eponymous social network, very practical for staying in touch with friends, the group also has WhatsApp messaging which saw its traffic multiply by five in a week and finally Instagram. The French Facebook subsidiary, headed by Laurent Solly, therefore decided to reduce the speed of its services.
" To help limit any potential network congestion, we will temporarily reduce bit rates for videos on Facebook and Instagram in Europe. We are committed to working with our partners to address any bandwidth constraints during this period of high demand, while ensuring that people can stay connected through Facebook applications and services, "said a Facebook spokesperson.
For its part, the Amazon platform, extremely used by French people confined to their homes to do their shopping, order their books or electronic equipment, also conforms to this need to save this resource which has become scarce: Internet traffic.
Next week, with the very likely strengthening of containment, the issue of maintaining the Internet link will be crucial.