Life has gone mostly online for many people around the world. With more people going online during the COVID-19 pandemic, global Internet traffic has become a big problem. Between January and late March, many major cities experienced an increase in Internet traffic.
Video meetings, online classrooms and stay-at-home entertainment have become a daily routine. This increase in traffic is testing the Internet’s strength. In March, major phone networks in the UK experienced mass outages (断供). People were not able to take calls, receive texts or use mobile data.
In the US, major telecommunications companies like AT&T said traffic was up 21 percent month over month. Video streaming services like You Tube, Netflix and Facebook have cut their picture qualities and download speeds. This is being done to reduce network traffic jams.
China has seen an Internet traffic increase of around 50 percent compared to the end of 2019. The country’s network speeds went down sharply in early February. However, they returned to normal soon afterwards and have been working well. This is due to China’s work in building network infrastructure (基础设施), especially 5G technology. By the end of February, 164,000 5G base stations had been built nationwide. This has given Chinese networks the power to handle increased traffic.
“If there were no such development in the Internet network field, people could hardly enjoy such a colorful life at home. Online working and teaching could never be realized so smoothly,” said Wen Kun, an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
【小题1】What happened to the Internet due to COVID-19?| A．Internet traffic was jammed. | B．Internet access was cut off. |
| C．Internet service was ignored. | D．Internet community was ruined. |
| A．To increase Internet strength. | B．To improve picture qualities. |
| C．To avoid Internet breakdown. | D．To reduce the number of users. |
| A．suffered bigger losses | B．recovered faster |
| C．cost less money | D．started earlier |
