As user-generated content inches toward the mainstream, new podcasters and vloggers are discovering something oldtimers have had to live with for years: residential download service is usually much faster than upload speeds. So if you want to send your hour-long video essay about your vacation, be prepared to see it go up to the Net at speeds you haven’t encountered since you put away your 56K modem. Dave Burstein, editor of the newsletter DSL Prime, told the Associated Press that 10 minutes of camcorder footage would take more than eight hours to send at the highest resolution.
But if “You” are the Person of the Year, as TIME maintains, maybe “You” deserve a road that goes just as fast in both directions. “The system is a hangover of the old mass media days,” technology analyst Paul Saffo told the AP. “Some consumers are uploading a tremendous amount of information and that’s the thing the establishment just doesn’t get.”
Actually, one thing the establishment does get is demand, and — TIME cover or not — that demand isn’t there yet. According to a Time Warner Cable spokesman, upload speed “has not been an issue for most of our customers, or we’d hear about it.”
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