Phillip "Swimming Upstream... slowly" Dampier

I spent the better part of today finding, assembling, and finally uploading the audio and video content covering Canada’s ongoing hearings about Internet Overcharging.  Locating and editing the content took about two hours, writing the piece to accompany it took another hour, and then everything  s   l   o   w   e   d  down from there.

Uploading several hundred megabytes of audio and video, included in today’s articles, was by far the most cumbersome part of the operation.  In all, it took nearly four hours to upload a handful of video and audio files, and that saturated our cable modem to the brink of un-usability.

While most providers concentrate upgrades on boosting download speeds, upload speeds have remained remarkably consistent — and painfully slow, for several years now.

Time Warner Cable, which provides our Internet connection, tops out at just 1Mbps for uploads locally, and it is slower during peak usage times.  Contrast that with 2Mbps in more competitive cities (with 5Mbps now common wherever DOCSIS 3 technology has been deployed).  Still, at least it is better than the 384kbps residents in upstate New York contended with for a decade earlier.

Cable modem technology is built on the premise that you will download far more than you will need to upload, and speeds are provided accordingly.  DSL service from some phone companies has managed to keep up with upload speeds… barely, if only because many cable providers have largely ignored the upstream component.

But as the Internet and social media become a more interactive part of our lives, we increasingly need to give as much as we get, and our Internet Service Providers continue to let us down in too many cases.

The one exception is fiber-to-the-home service, which can deliver synchronous (identical upload and download) speeds to their customers.  Community-owned fiber networks continue to be the kindest to their customers, thinking of speed equality as an advantage, not a marketing option that commands a high price.  Many of these networks are owned and operated by local governments — you know, the people we’re told never do anything right.

Yet in many instances they alone have the prescience to recognize broadband speeds have a direct impact on efficiency — at home and at work.  Many are building networks that leverage as many megabits per second they can get.  Why?  Because they can.  Such a response is scoffed at by many cable and phone companies, most of whom claim you don’t need that kind of speed.

For those of us without access to such state-of-the-art networks, we’ll have to continue setting our sights considerably lower.  Time Warner will finally bring 50/5Mbps service to Rochester early this year.  As far as they’re concerned, we should be glad to have it.  It will cost just shy of $100 per month on a standalone basis.  If we lived in Chattanooga, Tenn., home of EPB, the municipal broadband provider would sell us 50/50Mbps service for nearly $20 a month less — $79.99 per month.