Not to defend spectrum, but there is an actual reason for this besides malice.
Coax cable internet uses analog switching and routing between you and your ISPs first Ethernet hop. It’s basically a series of unconfigurable hardware low-pass and high-pass filters to ensure that upload traffic and download traffic flow cleanly.
When cable internet started and these systems were installed in your neighborhood, a range of low-frequency (low-bandwidth) channels were selected for uploads, and a range of high-frequency (high-bandwidth) channels were selected for downloads, going off the assumption that more people wanted downloads than anything else.
Fast-forward to today, and the ISPs don’t really have any choice but to sell you the asymmetry that they installed 20-30 years ago. The only way to redirect the flow and assignment of channels would be to rip out and replace all of those analog filters, and they’re not going to do that because grandma isn’t going to go without cable for 3 weeks. Grandma will call, get angry, and pick a new cable provider. Grandma is by far their most consistent and profitable customer.
And in case it needs to be spelled out, it’s upgrading the infra to offer better speeds. But they have no incentive to do so because that benefits only the customer.
Not to defend spectrum, but there is an actual reason for this besides malice.
Coax cable internet uses analog switching and routing between you and your ISPs first Ethernet hop. It’s basically a series of unconfigurable hardware low-pass and high-pass filters to ensure that upload traffic and download traffic flow cleanly.
When cable internet started and these systems were installed in your neighborhood, a range of low-frequency (low-bandwidth) channels were selected for uploads, and a range of high-frequency (high-bandwidth) channels were selected for downloads, going off the assumption that more people wanted downloads than anything else.
Fast-forward to today, and the ISPs don’t really have any choice but to sell you the asymmetry that they installed 20-30 years ago. The only way to redirect the flow and assignment of channels would be to rip out and replace all of those analog filters, and they’re not going to do that because grandma isn’t going to go without cable for 3 weeks. Grandma will call, get angry, and pick a new cable provider. Grandma is by far their most consistent and profitable customer.
I think there is actually a choice in there somewhere.
And in case it needs to be spelled out, it’s upgrading the infra to offer better speeds. But they have no incentive to do so because that benefits only the customer.
They just run a new fiber line to every customer that says “I need symmetric speeds, please”.