Because they can. Most people’s typical usage isn’t impacted by low uplink bandwidth. Very few people are uploading 4K content or live streaming or hosting a high traffic webserver from their garage. Less bandwidth means less expense, thus more profit. Capitalism, baby.

Just to prioritize download in limited bandwidth cables. Like a neighborhood might get 2Gbps total, but instead of doing 1 down 1 up they instead do 1.8 down and .2 up, then split that amongst a bunch of houses.

@dingus @worfamerryman On DSL you have a limited set of frequencies that you can use for either upload or download. So you have to split these frequencies between upload and download. Also the DSL speed is highly depending on the length of the copper between your home and the switch cabinet on the street. (Just remember: DSL is the transmission of high frequencies over unshielded cables that never meant to transmit high frequencies) So the longer the cable, the lower the total possible bandwidth. And most people have a demand for a higher download than upload. So most people will prefer some 16 down, 2 up instead of 8 down and 8 up.

In the old world of the internet, people didn’t upload much anyway.

Nobody worked from home. Nobody had their phones constantly syncing photos and videos to 1 (or often more) clouds. And even then, the photos and videos that you could take digitally were very low resolution and not very large files. Game consoles weren’t online by default until Xbox Gen 1 (and as an add on for GC and PS2) and PC gamers were a minority (and rarely direct peer-to-peer).

That has changed, and nobody forced ISPs to keep up. In a lot of markets, the Cable ISP is a monopoly and they don’t have to do shit about it.