Do we really need symmetrical broadband?

Just wondering what people on here think about the concept of symmetrical download and upload speeds.

Surely most residential users only ever use their download stream to its full capacity? Is it worth charging/paying a premium for a feature most will rarely if ever need?

Edited by deleted (Sun 25-Oct-09 16:50:19)

Not for me, as an ordinary user I guess about all I upload is e-mails and a few photos.

You are correct.

The prime need for synchronous is business use where similar amounts to download may need to be uploaded.

virtually nobody pays the (small) premium for faster upload on BT Wholesale services, so the market has voted with its wallet.

I do value faster upstream, but it doesn't need to be symmetrical only "fast enough". Depends what you do, if you send a few bytes to request a mutli GByte media download then you have an asymmetric use, if you send and receive large files after working on them your needs are more symmetrical.

In reply to a post by whitedot:

Just wondering what people on here think about the concept of synchronous download and upload speeds.

You got it right in the title and wrong in the body of the post. Symmetrical and synchronous are not the same thing.

To my mind symmetrical services are not of particular benefit to the home user but of benefit to businesses who want to host services or those who upload more - for example one of my clients has a photographic studio and they upload much more than they download, therefore a symmetrical service is of great benefit to them.

Edited.

depends what attitude you have.

if its "im alright jack" and you dont need it then yeah you wont want it.

if its the case you think about the future, and what some people will need then its good for the country these services get rolled out since leased lines are so yesterday.

Symmetrical services open up a whole host of possibilities. It's not so much about what's there now it's the possibilities it presents.

The price premium that was presented on BT Wholesale services was both an artificial premium in that it cost no extra to support and was also, oddly, very rarely offered to ISPs. This appears to be changing however as more uses for upstream bandwidth than P2P start to appear and Virgin Media and BT have a bit of a scrap over it.

Do we need symmetrical? Right now, no, no more than we need ADSL2+ or indeed any >8Mbps service. Do we want it? If the commercials are right hell yes, who wouldn't?

It is not just a matter of voting with its wallet. Most businesses will find symmetric SDSL or FTTP quite useful, even at a price, but as usual, these kinds of services are simply not provided by BT in many places. Here we see another issue with this telecoms provider refusing to provide any normal business-oriented services and holding back many small towns in the UK. This problem won't go away until BT is replaced by an actual telecoms provider.

It is not just a matter of voting with its wallet

if businesses don't take up the faster upstream premium business services that are already available on every exchange, it is hard to argue there is an unfulfilled demand.