Is There Pent-up Upload Demand?

It’s easy to understand the growth in download bandwidth due to people streaming higher quality video and similar uses. Why do you think upload broadband usage is growing even faster? According to OpenVault, average upload usage has increased 290% since 2019, while average download usage has increased by 270%. There are some obvious reasons why upload bandwidth usage has been growing. There is now a substantial percentage of people who work from home. Several studies I’ve seen and surveys we’ve conducted show that over 30% of homes have somebody who works at home at least part of each week—with many folks now working from home full time. But as I’ve been thinking about upload usage, I also think there has been a lot of pent-up demand that is getting slowly resolved as internet service providers improve upload speeds. I talk to people about their home bandwidth a lot, and I realized that I probably know a dozen people who have told me that they have to ration upload broadband. We’re seeing providers bringing faster upload speeds, and this will ease a lot of these problems. As pent-up upload demand is resolved, we should continue to see average upload usage growing faster than download usage over the next few years.