Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings announced it will launch its VooV videoconferencing app to help overseas users stay connected and work remotely as global authorities battle the coronavirus pandemic, the company announced in a statement.
— Tencent 腾讯 (@TencentGlobal) March 23, 2020
Wu Zurong, vice president for Tencent Cloud said that the coronavirus situation was "grim overseas" and hoped to offer companies the capability of working remotely.
"We expect to roll out the services in more parts of the world in the future in compliance with local regulations," he said.
The news comes as numerous internet platforms grapple with increased bandwidth traffic as workforces from roughly 170 countries work remotely amid the coronavirus pandemic, where many of the world's largest economies have imposed partial or nationwide lockdowns and curfews on the general public.
San Jose-based Zoom has seen a "large increase in the number of free users, meeting minutes and new video use cases" since the outbreak began abroad, company chief executive Eric Yuan said in a call as cited by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
— Eric S. Yuan (@ericsyuan) January 28, 2020
Alibaba, who owns the SCMP, reported a surge in its DingTalk app, which saw a 356 percent spike in downloads across iPhone and Android devices in mainland China along with Tencent meeting in late January, shortly after the virus hit the country.
Microsoft remote working app Teams reached 44m active users, an increase from 20m in November, according to the company.
The news comes as the COVID-19 outbreak causing the coronavirus pandemic has forced people to take to the internet amid national lockdowns and other measures, resulting in higher bandwidth usage.
— Susan Wojcicki (@SusanWojcicki) March 23, 2020
YouTube said it has limited streaming quality across the European Union in a bid to prevent bandwidth bottlenecks, stating it was switching traffic to "standard definition by default" with reviews after 30 days, the company said in March. The platform took the measures after EU industry chief Thierry Breton told streaming services to reduce video quality to avoid overloading the internet.
E-commerce behemoth Amazon also announced it was hiring a further 100,000 workers across the United States, including those from the hospitality and food industry who had lost jobs as a result of the pandemic, to cope with the jump in demand for products.
