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CenterFuse Broadband Feasibility Report The second factor affecting upload speeds is the nature of the upload requests from customers. Before the pandemic, the upload link was mostly used to send out attachments to emails or backup data on a computer into the cloud. These are largely temporary uses of the upload link and are also considered non-critical—it didn't matter to most folks if a file was uploaded in ten seconds or two minutes. However, during the pandemic, all of the new uses for uploading require a steady and dedicated upload data stream. People now are using the upload link to connect to school servers, to connect to work servers, to take college classes online, and to sit on video call services like Zoom. These are critical applications—if the broadband fails then the user loses the connection. The new upload applications can't tolerate best effort—a connection to school either works or it doesn't. The final big factor that affects the bandwidth on a cable network is demand. Before the pandemic, a user had a better chance of hitting 25 Mbps upload because they might have been one of a few people trying to upload at any given point in time. But today a lot of homes in a neighborhood are trying to use uploading at the same time. This matters because a cable system shares bandwidth both in the home, but also in the neighborhood. The upload link from a home can get overloaded if more than one person tries to connect to the upload link at the same time. Homes with a poor upload connection will find that a second or a third user cannot establish a connection. The same thing happens at the neighborhood level—if too many homes in a given neighborhood are trying to connect to upload links, then the bandwidth for the whole neighborhood starts to fail. Remember a decade ago that it was common for videos to freeze or pixelate in the evening when a lot of homes were using broadband?The cable companies have largely solved the download problem, but now we're seeing neighborhoods overloading on upload speeds. This results in people unable to establish a connection to a work server or being booted off a Zoom call. The net result of the overloaded upload links is that the cable companies are not and cannot deliver 25 Mbps to most homes during the times when people are busy on the upload links. The cable companies have ways to fix this—and most fixes mean expensive upgrades. Meanwhile, if the cable companies were honest, they would not be reporting 25 Mbps upload speeds to the FCC. Microsoft Speed Data Microsoft is in an interesting position when it comes to looking at broadband speeds. The vast majority of computers in the country download sizable upgrade files from Microsoft. Even many Apple computers are loaded with Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Microsoft decided a few years ago to record download speeds of software upgrades. There is probably no better way to measure a broadband connection than during a big file download. Most speed tests only measure broadband speeds for 30 seconds to a minute. A lot of ISPs in the country deploy a technology generally referred to as "burst." This technology provides a faster download for a customer for the first minute or two of a web event. It's easy for a customer to know if their ISP utilizes burst, because during a long download, such as updating Microsoft Office, the user can see the download speeds drop to a slower speed after a short time. This technology has great benefits to customers since the large majority of web activities don't take very long. When customers visit a website, open a picture, or even take a speed test, the customer only needs bandwidth for a short time to complete most web tasks. The burst technology gives customers the impression that they have a faster download speed than they actually have (or it could be conversely argued that they have a fast speed, but just for a minute or two). Page 40