Colombia. To guarantee the provision of telecommunications service for all citizens, the Colombian government provided that video-on-demand playback services over the Internet will prioritize the transmission of their content in standard definition format, that is, that is, that it is not high definition or higher.
The foregoing means that priority should be given to the transmission of video content in standard definition format, without limiting the user's choice of higher definitions, in accordance with the conditions of access to the service in each particular case and, in no way, will be understood as the possibility of blocking any type of content, except those expressly prohibited by law.
The objective of this measure, set out in Article 4 of Decree 464 of 2020, is to guarantee access to the telecommunications service to the entire population through the prevention of saturation in Internet networks that, eventually, generate unavailability of the service.
Consequently, video-on-demand reproduction services over the Internet may, in addition to the provisions of the Decree, deploy all the actions they deem appropriate to ensure access to the Internet for the entire population during the emergency. For example, reducing the bitrate at which videos are streamed.
The Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies is permanently analyzing the traffic behavior of the networks in order to determine in a timely manner the measures to be implemented, as well as the effectiveness of the measure described above.
Through Decree 417 of 2020, the national government declared an economic, social and ecological emergency, due to the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic defined by the World Health Organization. In this context, care measures to preserve health and life, especially social distancing, imply that people must carry out their activities remotely, and particularly through the Internet, with unprecedented intensity.
