Google knows it pretty well, and pretty much every other content provider in India understands this as well: India has a limited bandwidth and connectivity issue when it comes to the internet. This is why a number of streaming services today do offer the option to take content offline. In fact, Google has been adding a steady stream of offline features to YouTube. So what’s holding back Netflix all this time? It turns out that Netflix isn’t blind to reality and the content provider is looking to push out an offline feature, but this is only expected to arrive in new (developing) markets like India where its customers do not always have access to high speed internet. Allowing content to be downloaded offline in a country whose regulator that defines broadband speed as 512Kbps, would be big for the content provider’s customers indeed. Following plenty of speculation, it turns out that Netflix is ready to take its content offline… soon. In an interview with CNBC, Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said that offline content could be heading to markets where high internet speeds are not present. “Now as we’ve launched in more territories…they all have different levels of broadband speeds and Wi-Fi access. So in those countries they have adapted their behaviors to be much more of a downloading culture. So in those emerging territories it starts to become a little more interesting. We still think for the developed world our thesis has been true but I think as we get into more and more (of the) undeveloped world and developing countries, that we want to find alternatives for people to use Netflix easily,” Sarandos told CNBC. Sarandos also said that the company was “looking at it now, so we’ll see when.” Indeed, all of this comes after the Netflix went worldwide not too long ago. Earlier available in countries with a high internet penetration, Netflix will have to look into the use cases with customer from different countries with access to different internet speeds to get users onto its service.
Allowing content to be downloaded offline in a country whose regulator that defines broadband speed as 512Kbps, would be big for Netflix’ customers indeed.
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