As an aside, why aren't symmetric last-mile Internet connections a thing? Is it a technical, physical capacity thing, is it a customer demand thing, or what? The last time I had symmetric bandwidth was back in the days of ISDN.
Combination of things. For fiber, direct Ethernet connections, etc that have clearly separated channels symmetric is fairly common. In ADSL and cable network the spectrum is shared for up- and download channels, so they have to balance it. And since marketing mostly happens over download speeds and most people don't upload very much, offering eg. 50/10 instead of 30/30 makes more sense.
I don't know why basically all providers don't allow to adjust the ratio, I suspect to much "complexity" for to little demand. (Quite a while back a German ISP had that for their ADSL connections, was popular with web developers and other professionals that needed fast upload occasionally)
People don't upload very often because their upstream sucks.
This is chicken-and-egg bullshit.
I am sure it is not that difficult to provision.
The area I resided in, had only DSL.
Later, a cable company ran FTTP, with a ONT outside, that converted the fiber to coax-DOCSIS, and then requires the usage of a cable modem? The ONT has a RJ-45 port, but the cable company does not know how to enable it.
The DSL was oversubscribed, and provisioned for less than 6Mbps/768kbps. However, it was only $35/mo.
Once the cable company offered service, it was $60 (plus modem rental or purchase) for 6Mbps/1Mbps.
Many people switched to the fake-fiber cable network, freeing up capacity on the DSL, so now the DSL is provisioned at 12Mbps, but upload is still 768kbps, and still $35/mo.
To get 5Mbps upload via the cable company would require a plan costing over $100/mo. That is their upper limit of upload speed. They can do 105Mbps down (closer to $150/mo), but 5Mbps up is the max.
I would love to have even 3Mbps upstream from the DSL provider
For now, I can use LTE for periodic uploading, where I can get 20 to 50Mbps, but I am paying much more for that privilege.
But, when time is money, I cannot afford to wait 3 hours for data to transfer at 768kbps (not considering encapsulation - yes, the DSL is PPPoE).
"Later, a cable company ran FTTP, with a ONT outside, that converted the fiber to coax-DOCSIS, and then requires the usage of a cable modem? The ONT has a RJ-45 port, but the cable company does not know how to enable it."
Not to sound rude, but you don't actually believe that, do you?
