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In Australia, with our "National Broadband Network" rollout, the highest speed plan a retail customer could get was 100mbit down and 40mbit up (100/40). In the

In Australia, with our "National Broadband Network" rollout, the highest speed plan a retail customer could get was 100mbit down and 40mbit up (100/40). In the last few years, this has now changes to 100/20 (and you need to buy a 250mbit down plan to get the old 40mbit up), because the national infrastructure co. charges for capacity each way, and uploads were just not being used enough for ISPs to justify paying for the upload capacity that was going unused. I'm not convinced symmetrical is the future. I would like it, but even in these days of remote work, nobody cares about their upload speed.

solraph 5y ago
> and uploads were just not being used enough for ISPs to justify paying for the upload capacity that was going unused I think it was pretty clear at the time that the "nobody uses it rhetoric" was to get around the lack of upload capacity on the HFC network (High Frequency Cable, otherwise known as cable TV coax for the international readers). The smoking gun is that you can get 250/50, but can't get 100/100 for any amount of money. Coming back to the article, Australia is a perfect warning of why broadband requirements should mandate 100/100, and therefore force new builds to build fibre. If congress allows 100/20, then the USA can join Australia in re-spending billions redoing infrastructure over and over again, instead of just getting it right the first time.