One of Verizon’s ad campaigns touts the fact (opinion?) that Fios’s upload speed is the same as its download speed, unlike their competition.
Does this really matter to most people? I don’t see the practical importance of it unless one is uploading tons of data and need it to get completed very quickly. I guess I’m looking for examples of why it’s so seemingly important that Verizon would create a whole ad campaign for it.
I do a decent amount of work from home, and this sometimes requires me sending large sets of documents around, so while it’s not a huge deal to me, upload speed isn’t without some value.
The distinction was always artificial, made to fractionally increase download speed, when within recent history, download speeds were quite low. Now they are increasing, 15Mb, 25Mb, 50mb etc., it seems nice of Verizon to equalize.
I don’t have a need at present, but plenty of businesses and people who still run home servers ought to be pleased.
It’s an ad campaign - it doesn’t have to be over an important issue, it just has to be over a marketable issue.
My wife and I do occasionally upload large documents back to her office, so for us at least fast upload speeds are … nice. Not important, just nice. For most folks, they probably aren’t even that.
I’ve never used it. However when I transfer large files with another person I do so via external hard drive or thumb drive. If both I and the person I trade with had 20Mbps+ upload and download speeds I’d probably transfer files online.
Maybe it is like that Bill Gates quote of ‘why would anyone need more than 640kB of memory’. People won’t know what to do with it until they get it.
Then again, I first got broadband 20 years ago. I have never needed more than about 4Mbps in download speeds, despite having access to 50+. I don’t need 90%+ of the download speeds I have access to.
It matters now more with cloud storage I would think. I hate using Dropbox and I can’t even imagine doing online/cloud backups of my data with my upload speed, which I think is like 140 Kbps.
I do work at home, which includes things like publishing websites, uploading files and graphics, etc. These things, and even just posting to social media and running light marketing campaigns requires uploading files that can be noticeably slower on a slow up connection. It’s not usually too much of an inconvenience these days but was definitely an annoyance w/ some previous jobs.
The problem is that many people do not care that there are still many people on dial-up or FAB satellite hook-ups. They think everyone has a fiber hook-up with a high end computer… The make snobs look like good people.
Sometimes I up-load over 100 pictures a night from my game camera.
I take about 100 out of 3-700 taken by the camera in the 750 K range.
I re-size, color correct and take them to about 800 pixels on the long side and from 130 to 50 K on average.
So yeah, up-load speed is important to me. I live out of the big cities a bit and fiber is not getting here anytime soon.
I hate slow & do not have $$$ to move just to get fiber.
YMMV
People have mentioned uploading files, which is obviously one important issue.
If you use a VOIP phone, like Vonage, the upload speed is just as important to a good call as the download speed.
Another issue that matters to me is remote access to my computers. I remotely log into my office computer using Remote Desktop on a regular basis. Data is going both ways from both computers, so I can’t afford to completely ignore the upload speed.
Both of these uses noticeably suffered back in the days when I had a plan that only gave me 256k upload speeds.
My current Comcast service is so fast, though, that the limited upload speed isn’t much an issue anymore. When I made the move from Fios to Comcast, I went from 2mb down/2mb up to 6 down/1 up and never noticed a problem. Comcast has since doubled my speeds to 12 down/2 up (I think).
Still, when you’re creating an ad campaign, you don’t intend to reach everyone. If only 1% of people need high upload speeds and Fios can snatch them up, that’ll make it a successful ad campaign from a financial standpoint.
I ripped all my DVDs to a home media server. I can stream to any device on my network. If my upload bandwidth were greater, I could stream to my laptop even when I’m on the road, or I could go over to a friend’s house and we could watch a movie I own. That would be pretty cool.
I wouldn’t pay a lot for it, but I’d pay something extra.
phone and vid calls use it. though it still could be half or less of your download speed and work well, if you weren’t bottom tier.
It’s becoming more and more important for gaming as well–more and more games have multiplayer components, and many of them aren’t using dedicated servers, instead one person “hosts” the game and everyone else connects to them, so upload speed is important for that.
Plus, more and more people are sharing their gaming experiences, via YouTube, Twitch, SteamCast, etc, and upload is important for that as well.