Optus starts to charge for uploads

Optus has decided to charge for uploads as well as downloads on its new all-in-one bundle plan. So far only Telstra has counted uploads, but now it seems like others are following suit. It all comes down to the fact that people have started to upload more data than ever before and with services such as P2P networking and people uploading videos to sites like YouTube, this trend isn't likely to stop any time soon.

The scary news here is that other ISPs are sympathetic to uploads being part of peoples internet bandwidth caps. Australian ISPs are worried that if uploads continues at the current rate, then it'll "become a cost problem".

Although Optus is only applying the upload charge in its new all-in-one bundle so far, it's considering to count uploads on its other broadband packages as well. According to the ABS, Australian internet users download 40 trillion megabytes from January 1 to March 31 this year, compared to 33 trillion megabytes in the previous quarter.

Although DSL and Cable modem technology is more suitable for downloads than uploads, this doesn't mean that people won't upload files and with increasing home workers, this is also a worrying issue, as they'll use more bandwidth for uploading data to the office or to clients.

As if the cost of broadband wasn't expensive enough in Australia, this seems to be just another kick in the groin for everyone that's using broadband. Australia might not be the most expensive country in the world for broadband, but it has some of the lowest monthly usage caps considering the cost.

You can read some comments from various ISPs here