COAI urges subscribers for responsible usage of data to ease burden on telcom infra

The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has urged subscribers to responsibly use the data in order to reduce the load on communications infrastructure as millions of people are staying indoors due to the Covid-19 lockdown.

The industry body represents the telecom companies such as Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and Reliance Jio.

According to COAI Director General Rajan Mathews, there has been about 20-30% surge in the demand for data in the last few days.

"We are asking people for responsible usage of network...to avoid any trivial use of internet and networks...so that remote working, online education, digital healthcare, payments and other critical services, can run smoothly and uninterrupted," he is quoted as saying.

Mathews added that some users can choose to take up their online work during non-peak hours, which are early morning or late evening.

COAI's new campaign comes shortly after it asked the OTTs to reduce streaming quality in order to ease the burden on telecommunications network.

Following the COAI's request, several streaming players including the likes of Netflix and Hotstar have announced switching to SD streaming by default for smartphone users. Sony, Google, Facebook, Viacom18, MX Player, Hotstar, Zee, Tiktok, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are also implementing the same.

"The digital industry has decided to act immediately in the larger national and consumer interest and to ensure the robustness of the cellular network," digital companies said in a joint statement. "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 not higher than 480p on cellular networks."