Upload Speed

Why are the upload speeds so slow on fibre networks? I understood with copper that there was a throughput limitation, however that goes away with fibre. So why do VM and BT only offer 20mb/s upload? Sure it should be the same up and down?

With the rise of cloud services such as OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon Drive, etc., should they not be increasing these speeds so we can upload our content more quickly?

VM have just told me they have only recently increased their upload speed to 20mb/s and both have no plans to increase this at this current time.

Seems pretty poor to me.

VDSL2 is up to 20 Mbps compared to the up to 1.1 Mbps of ADSL2+ so a big change.
Virgin Media DOCIS is increasing the upload of products over time as you've seen.

Technical reason being that as both systems rely on RF signals to satisfy the larger demand for download capacity, e.g. stream UHD content systems are designed to use more spectrum for download and upload.

For many FTTH networks around the globe that use GPON similar compromises occur. Where point to point fibre is deployed the technical reasons don't exist, but economic ones may do, e.g. to avoid people running a 1 Gbps data centre on a �45 connection in a student flat.

thanks for the explanation, it kind of makes sense, especially the last piece. Just getting fed up of my content taking a while to upload. Surely they can do better than 20MB by now.

Adding to MrS's comments. Some of it is down to how the ISPs deal with public demand and givernement drivers. People seem to want "download speed" and targets are always around download.

It is technically possible that the tones used could be reallocated to get greater upload. For example by increasing those used in U0 and U1 however that would take speed away from D1 which could then make VDSL impossible for some users. It is a balancing act and when the various plans were set up a lot of work went into various options to find one which gave the greatest potential satisfaction and usability.

What would you prefer? Say 35 down and 10 up OR 15 down and 30 up?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

to avoid people running a 1 Gbps data centre on a �45 connection in a student flat.

That cracked me up that did LOL.

Paul

What I would prefer is 200 down and something like 50 up.

In reply to a post by puntoboy:

What I would prefer is 200 down and something like 50 up.

Well I am waiting for G.Fast to go live everywhere, that way our FTTP (when it finally gets done) might get an increase

Paul

I don't think so - GFast is a copper based service, nothing to do with FTTP!

While nothing to with FTTP suspect the hope is that they might mirror the G.fast 330/50 product onto the GEA-FTTP network as a product option above the existing top end product.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

While nothing to with FTTP suspect the hope is that they might mirror the G.fast 330/50 product onto the GEA-FTTP network as a product option above the existing top end product.

Hold up, Have I missed something? Fibre isn't going to be the best product? What's G. Fast?

300/50 would be lovely on FTTP.