So there is no point in making higher resolution cameras, that won't run 5 frames per second.
Besides, high-end phones have very good cameras nowadays but they sell for a $1000 and upward. The typical webcam budget is rather in the $20-30 range. If you're willing to put hundred(s) in a webcam, like businesses and streamers, there are good options.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/616210/average-internet-...
Anecdotally, my local ISP has gone from everyone getting 10/1 to 100/5 in the base package in the last few years.
I would also say 5mbps upload is hardly an upgrade. A single FaceTime call uses a couple mbps, so it’s probably just enough for that, assuming everyone in the neighborhood isn’t uploading too, which they are nowadays.
Specific data on upload speeds is harder to come by, but https://www.tomsguide.com/us/internet-speed-what-you-need,ne... says "According to Ookla, the average U.S. broadband download speed is 96 Mbps and average upload speeds are now at 33Mbps."
The ISPs can claim whatever numbers they want, but the real test is what it feels like when you use it.
So to quote a source, that is not my brain: from 2017 to 2018 upload speeds went up 22%
https://www.vox.com/2018/12/12/18134899/internet-broafband-f...
There’s a reason it’s never advertised by cable ISPs.
Anything on the ISP network is most likely fiber (or Ethernet within one building), so symmetric both ways.
That’s why they fight municipal fiber installation in court. If they didn’t do this, they wouldn’t be so evil, and also why fiber internet needs to be a utility, like electricity, water, gas, and sewage.
Also, since the media companies are also the owners of the wire in the case or Comcast, they can prioritize their traffic and de prioritize competitor’s traffic.
Define "fairly recently". I haven't paid per-text in over a decade.
The average of 9 households having broadband and 1 having gigabit fiber may be 100 Mbps theoretically, but practically that's 9 people who can't use a HD webcam.
This is... not the case?
Broadband ADSL has a total usable bandwidth around 20/1 Mbps due to how it works, that goes down significantly as a home is further from the phone center. Many homes won't get any better than 5/0.5 as they're kilometers away.
A single fiber can do a Tbps both ways. The difference is night and day.
The part that ignores the existence of cable internet? Or the fact that plenty of people are on cell phones for their broadband usage?
The available options are more than "DSL, fiber, or nothing".
Its definitely improving on average.
A 1080p video on Netflix today has lower quality (bitrate) than a 720p video on Youtube 5 years ago. The only reason Netflix HD works for so many people is because Netflix has lowered the standard of what was considered HD.
Fact is, x265 can do 25-33% smaller size than x264 for equivalent visual quality. The higher gain at higher resolutions (2k, 4k) that were not well supported by older codecs anyway. You can refer to Netflix own papers on that.
Services doing half the bandwidth have reduced quality. The improvement in codec can only explain half the reduction, the other half is grossly lowering quality (to reduce costs and work with mediocre home connections). That's not necessarily bad for customers, better have a pseudo HD stream than no stream.
Here in South Korea, 100M symmetric is the bare minimum. For just a few dollars more, you can upgrade to an "up to 500M" plan that usually provides something like 300M symmetric. Often, upload speeds are even faster than download speeds because there's less congestion in that direction.
Where was the US mentioned, and how is this relevant?
I picked the US as a worst-case example because it has some of the most asymmetric broadband plans in the developed world. How on Earth does an ISP get away with selling something like 100/5?
I've got 500/500 MBit/s at home. 10 years ago I had about 30, but even that is more than sufficient to stream high quality video.
And this is not a "first-world" country even.