TOKYO: Internet data traffic has spiked in Japan as schools are closed and remote working is encouraged amid the coronavirus epidemic, with concerns rising over slower connection speeds.

According to major internet service provider NTT Communications Corp., the amount of data usage in the five weekdays through Friday increased by up to 40 percent from mid-February, as more people used the internet to work from home and watch videos on video streaming sites.

A public relations official of the company said that its telecommunications infrastructure is capable of withstanding more than double the current level of data traffic, but some people have already seen connection lags due to busy network links on the side of employers and video streaming site operators.

Companies are rushing efforts to deal with the rise in data traffic. Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. said it has doubled the number of connection lines for teleworking employees to access the company's in-house system from their homes to 5,000, while convenience store operator Seven-Eleven Japan Co. also increased its communication lines.

US internet giant Google has temporarily lowered the image quality for its video platform YouTube in order to deal with the global spike in data traffic.

Many universities have introduced remote lessons using online meeting services.

According to the education ministry, the proportion of universities and technical schools that have introduced or will introduce remote lessons from April have come close to 50 percent nationwide, with schools such as Nihon University, which has some 67,000 students, and the University of Tokyo conducting lessons online.

"Data traffic is at its peak during the nighttime even now, and a rise in data traffic during the daytime is manageable," an official from the Japanese communications ministry said.

However, there remain concerns that the spike in usage may lead to lower connection speeds for companies, universities and households depending on their network communication environment.

"We want to take sufficient measures to ensure opportunities for learning," an official from a university said.

JIJI Press