Shifting the broadband paradigm

Verizon Online just increased its minimum upload speeds from 128 kb/s to 384 kb/s. On its surface, that doesn't seem like the most significant announcement in the world--providers have always focused on their services' download muscle, and 256 kb/s uptick on the upstream side seems of little consequence when DSL carriers and cable operators are offering speeds of 3 Mb/s to 4 Mb/s coming the other way.

But that boost in bandwidth on the downstream represents much more in terms of how our society is starting to use broadband. The whole principle of asymmetric DSL rests on the idea that far more information would be coming into a consumer's modem than coming out, which is why no company every made serious efforts to market symmetric DSL to residential users. But that model was based on the premise that people would use broadband the same way they used dial-up: for downloading content, just at much faster speeds.

But what we're seeing today is that people are creating content: They're uploading photos, gaming online, trading files over peer-to-peer connections and making VoIP calls. Consumers are no longer passively engaged with the Internet. They're contributing to it in ways that could hardly be predicted when the first one-way cable modems and DSLAMs rolled out in the 90s.

There couldn't be anything better for the industry. If you have an active investment in the Internet, you have more incentive to keep your access to the Internet unclogged. We're still a long way from the upstream matching the downstream in everyday Web surfing, but you will definitely see the balance between them evening out.

Contact me at kfitchard@primediabusiness.com