Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast

on how digital technology has made confinement a little more bearable.

The coronavirus pandemic forced most of the world's population into lockdown.

But thanks to digital technologies, we were mostly able to keep on working,

studying, shopping and chatting with our loved ones without leaving our homes.

But the crisis has also highlighted some painful truths about our digital world.

Want to know more? Stay with us.

To many of us, the confinement has been like a crash course in digital skills.

We've had to learn because there was no other way.

So today, words like Zoom, Teams, WebEx or House Party have become common language.

This is indeed the first pandemic in history in which digital technologies have been used on a massive scale to keep people connected while in isolation, allowing them to telework, follow online courses, shop online or consult health professionals from home.

Needless to say, all these activities have generated an unprecedented surge in traffic on telecoms networks, with some operators

experiencing as much as 60% increase in internet traffic.

So far, operators have been able to manage this with the help of some exceptional measures,

such as temporarily removing broadband data caps and providing extra data and free online content.

But the crisis has brought the debate on the need for 5G and higher speed networks to the forefront.

But before we go into that, let's have a look at everything we have already managed to do online

during these past months with the current infrastructure.

Let's start with teleworking.

With governments and companies imposing mandatory teleworking in order to contain the spread of the virus,

video conferencing apps have experienced a record growth

with 62 million downloads in March worldwide.

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