Verizon from the United States recorded a 20% increase in web traffic, 12% in video traffic, 75% in gaming and 34% in VPN use in the last seven days. Operator CTO Kyle Malady spoke of an unprecedented situation: "Although it is unclear how the millions of people working at home will impact usage patterns, we are ready to make changes, if necessary." Telecom Italia speaks of an increase of more than 70% in Internet traffic since the beginning of March, largely due to online video games. From the other side of the globe, Thai mobile operator dtac reported double and even triple increases in video conference traffic between January 1 and March 19: Zoom had a growth of 828% and Skype of 215%.

These cases are part of a global trend, which has already generated a 30% increase in demand for Internet servers, according to data from the British company Helfice. Faced with these records, European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton called Netflix to join the #Switchto Standard campaign and restrict streaming in HD. The latter requires between four and five times more data than SD. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings responded to the commissioner's appeal on Twitter, and indeed the streaming platform will reduce quality in Europe for thirty days, thereby reducing Netflix-generated traffic by 25%.

This is the most concrete reaction to ease the burden on networks since the start of the pandemic. If we look at the download speed data recorded by Ookla (see separate graph), in Spain a decrease in fixed broadband was observed since the week of February 24 -when the first case was confirmed in Tenerife- and this trend it remained until last week. For its part, Italy shows increases in latency and decreases in speed, which began to be seen in the Lombardy region in the week of February 17, and then moved to the entire country.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has authorized the use of additional spectrum to three operators to face the increase in demand: Verizon will access frequencies in AWS-3 of Northstar Wireless for 60 days and SNR Wireless License; T-Mobile will use spectrum in 600 Mhz of Dish and broadcasters; and US Cellular will use additional frequencies on AWS-3.

Latin America and telework. The company that owns the Seabras-1 submarine cable (connects Brazil with the United States), and the Colombian Edge Uno, with an IP network and an offer of Infrastructure as a Service throughout the region, agreed in a dialogue with Convergencia that IP traffic over their layings increased between 25% and 40% in the last week, a trend with which other sources consulted coincide.

Both companies announced a free Internet connectivity offer to non-profit NGOs, government agencies, health care and education providers in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Chile and Argentina on Wednesday.

Regarding teleworking tools and their impact on networks, Mehmet Akcin, CEO of EdgeUno, confided that traffic rose 10%, but what makes the difference is the time of continued use: the permanence on Skype or platforms like Microsoft Teams used to average 30 minutes, and now they watch five-hour sessions.

Adoption metrics for Webex, Cisco's teleconferencing tool, also showed accelerated growth. So far in March, globally, more than 6 billion minutes were recorded in meetings. And every five to ten days, traffic doubles, according to Gabriel Sakata, Cisco Country Manager for Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Among the figures for the region, Mexico stands out, with 226,837 virtual meetings on Webex this month, followed by Brazil with 190,218, Argentina with 58,762 and Chile with 32,990. "The subscriber rate grew 7 times in all the countries where there was a peak of the coronavirus outbreak", said the executive.