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When It Comes to Pain at the Pipe, Upstream Is the New Downstream This content requires a paid GigaOM Pro subscription

Upstream bandwidth use is on the rise, with some vendors reporting a 24 percent increase in traffic from 2007 to 2008. But does that increase mean more people are contributing content to the web, or that the few who do contribute use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth? While ISPs are addressing the latter scenario with restrictions and caps, I'm inclined to believe this is a widespread movement of people putting their lives online. That means ISPs are going to have to start pushing the limits on upstream speeds and capacity — or see customers change service providers (if they can). So, which carriers can keep adding upstream bandwidth to serve consumer demand? And what services will help drive that demand? […]

Featured Responses

  1. Mari Silbey
    2009/08/13 at 12:12
    Here's one data point. Look at the increase in YouTube's maximum file upload size. It went from 10 MB when I first started uploading to YouTube, to 100 MB, than 1 GB, and most recently 2 GB. Figure HD uploads have to have to have something to do with that. And that means an increase in upstream bandwidth needed.