It may be that the fears of phone and cable company IPSs that increased internet connectivity will reduce people’s need for their other services is what is holding them back from increasing uploads speeds for a truly symmetric system.
As the internet becomes more and more interactive, i.e. Web 2.0, the need for users to share and upload data has never been greater.
We have all known how miniscule our upload speeds are in comparison to our download speeds, in many cases 10 to 15 times less, for some time but, we have have been by in large able to with them comfortably.
It used to be that a majority of people were merely consumers of media on the internet, be it the streaming or downloading of audio and video content., and never had much concern for contributing to it.
It was left to those with a lot of patience or business-grade connection lines to make content available for others.
In an article from the AP, it points out that the rapid rise of YouTube, and its subsequent purchase for $1.76 billion by Google Inc., clearly means that internet users are increasingly becoming “contributors” of content and therefore need more symmetrical download and upload speeds.
Telecommuters, meanwhile, want to send PowerPoints and other files as quickly as they can to their offices, and emerging tasks like online backups, video conferencing and telemedicine will tax systems even more, experts say.
“The system is a hangover of the old mass media days,” said Paul Saffo, a technology analyst in Palo Alto, Calif. “Some consumers are uploading a tremendous amount of information and that’s the thing the establishment just doesn’t get.”
Though whether it’s due to pressure from RIAA, the MPAA, or other entertainment lobbying organizations, obviously worried about increased user “contributions” isn’t clear but,. some ISPs insist the demand just isn’t there.
“Speed has not been an issue for most of our customers, or we’d hear about them,” said Mark Harrad, spokesman for Time Warner Cable.
AT&T Inc. spokesman Michael Coe said customers may indeed be sharing more files, but “the majority of their time is spent downloading. As needs change, we’ll look at offerings that meet customers’ needs, whether it’s symmetric service or it’s just higher upload speeds.”
What really may be the reason for the holdup are the fears of phone and cable company IPSs that increased internet connectivity reduces people’s need for their other services.
Skype and other VOIP services have already in many ways rendered traditional phone services obsolete, if not at the very least halted and reduced growth in demand.
Programs like TVUPlayer and the upcoming Venice Project, which I’ve had a chance to test drive mind you and lives up to much of the hype, are also making some cable TV services seem overpriced and outdated.
When you can stream most of your favorite TV channels or make a phone call to anywhere in the world for free, what the heck do you need from the phone and cable TV companies other than a nice broadband connection?
“Cable companies have been busy trying to offer telephone services, and telephone companies are trying to duplicate the cable TV model,” Bachula said. “They should stop focusing on 20th century services and realize it’s the 21st century. There are exciting new advanced services they could make money from.”
Well said.
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I really cannot believe that the only reason that ISP’s will not upgrade their upload bandwith is because they basically want to hang on to old technology. I think more than anything it is a very simple explination…COST!
It usually costs an ISP millions if it wants to totally upgrade it’s whole network. I think it is more a matter of what an ISP’s budget will allow than anything else.
well considering that they regularly say with great fanfare that they have increased DL speeds it begs the question of why DL speeds are STILL 10 to 15 times greater than upload speeds.
Also if it is an issue of cost why is that the only option available if u want higher upload speeds is to buy an expensive high-speed business grade type connections? Theres tiers for DL speeds but no similar sort of tier plans for the UL speeds. I know it has to do with the network being upgraded for the new demand but it really does make u wonder at the very least if they will drag their feet on this one.
Competition will force them to change there ways. Also I worked for an ISP – changing the speeds is easy have the bandwidth there to cope is the problem.
@soulxtc…I also think another reason besides cost that they want to only offer download versus upload is the faar that the ISP will have to deal with the RIAA or MPAA if they make it easier for people to put large amounts of “illegal” content on the web.
They do it now anyway but it takes more time to do so. Can you imagine the files on a news server if the ISPs made it that much earsier by making the upload speed EQUAL to the download speed? Same thought could apply to Bit Torrent networks…where files would literally explode onto the net and would be great for the average joe because seeding would be a breeze but a nightmare for the copyright police.
My ratio is probably the worst my download is so fucking fast it consumes nearly all of my upload just downloading. if i can actually find a server that can feed my pipe I can get anywhere from 900 kiloBYTES to 1.2 megabits down and am stuck with somewhere between 256/384 for upload. Anything over 700k a second download and it starts eating up about half my available upload. My connection is not friendly to Bit Torrent and file sharing in general and i think that could be the real issue.
Think if it were reversed if our uploads were much higher than downloads there would be a huge pool of available bandwidth on bit torrent and other similarly structured networks there would be no way to use it all and everyone could contribute; you would have much higher content saturation than what is possible now.
*EDIT* I made a typo that is supposed to be 1.2 megabytes down.
Yeah that was what I meant. If the ISP’s did have a great upload speed Bit torrent would be fantastic to seed on….but the copyright police would probably scream bloody murder because so much of copyrighted was going on the net so fast.
Thats one of my points that I think one of the reasons why they dont is because they’re afraid of the copyrigth police aka RIAA and MPAA…….
and yeah can u imagine if u had a better UL speed for seeding? Say u download a 70MB XVID flic. Instead of having to seed at max 60kbs for like 7 hours you would only have to seed it for say like 3.5 or less…..
plus it would make everybody elses DL speeds insanely faster! One seeder on a rare album? No problem.
I think the true cause holding back these upgrades is politics…recently my line was upgraded from a 4MBIt (530 KB/s down and 45KB/s up) to a 10Mbit (1200+ KB/s down and 128 KB/s up). The power is there but the government is holding it back.
i heard an explanation about this years ago. if you have same upload as download you can easily run a server off your connection some “most” people back when this model was established did not run web servers or need that much upload they on purposly charged people extra for the upload speed
Also if you have a symetrical 10 megabit connection (or any fast symetrical connection) all you would have to do is buy a switchboard; you could feed a LOT of dial up users and make a tidy profit.