Re: I would be happy...
Anyone know why BT don't offer symmetric?
1. So that they can continue to offer "Unlimited" bandwidth packages.
In the download direction, there's only so much bandwidth you can consume: sooner or later you need to watch those videos, or play those games you downloaded. Faster speed mostly means downloading the same amount in a shorter time.
But in the upload direction, there are a minority of people who abuse the network by filling the pipe 24x7, whether that be by hosting bittorrent or by doing full backups of their server every 10 minutes to the cloud. If you apply a transfer limit or FUP, even something huge like 10TB per month, everyone will complain loudly. By keeping the upload speed low, you put a lid on the problem.
Remember that BT/OR are mainly concerned about the 95% of people who just watch Netflix and download games, not the 5% who process 8K video at home and upload it.
2. So that they can allow altnets some of the customers.
If BT/OR were to squeeze altnets completely out of the market, this would be considered anti-competitive, and lead to increased regulation. The altnets have only two selling points: they are cheaper (since they can cherry-pick where to build and are unregulated); and they offer faster uploads. BT/OR is happy to hand off the least profitable, most bandwidth-hungry 5% of customers to altnets in order to show "the market is working".
3. To protect their highly profitable leased line market. Leased lines are still a better grade of service, but for many users, a contended PON symmetric service would be a perfectly acceptable replacement.