So, you get home from a trip, and you're excited to share your 500 pictures and around a half hour of video (because you're a camera nut) from your camera or phone to Facebook or Google+, only to find that you're waiting at least 10 hours for it to finish loading. Why is that? Do you need a new computer? Is your internet connection slow? Is there a problem with your camera software? And didn't your internet provider try to up-sell you, saying that the connection is blazingly fast?
Well, there's a simple answer to that. The internet functions by transferring data in two directions, you can receive data from a source, or you can send out data to a destination. In computing terminology, receiving data is called downloading, and sending data is called uploading. In North America, the upload speed is generally a small fraction of the download speed (usually around 10%, sometimes lower), but more unfortunately, it's often just really slow in the first place.
Here's an example using specs from the Canon PowerShot ELPH 100 HS (Canon's entry level camera in their ELPH compact camera line). Using my example above, 500 pictures (12.1MP, fine compression) uses 1.47GB of data. 25 minutes of 720p video (the camera supports 1080p, but I think 720p works more than well enough for my example) uses 4.37GB of data. Just a random note, but you'll need at least an 8GB card to fit all of that on your camera at once. So how long will that take to post to your preferred photo or video websites? It depends on what your upload speed is, but assuming that it's 1Mbps (not to be confused with MB/s, there's 8 bits per byte), it'll take at least 3 hours 25 minutes to post the pictures and at least 10 hours 11 minutes to post the video(s). I'd like to point out that videos taken with consumer cameras can sometimes be very large, much like this case.
Similarly, video calls can get choppy for the same reason of low upload speeds. See the website for your video calling client for the requirements. Or ignore it and hope for the best, that also works.
Here are some charts of internet packages offered by some of the Canadian internet providers, in order from west to east. Because of the way the system works in Canada, there's two main options in each area, at least from what most people know of.
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| Shaw Cable Internet in British Columbia and Alberta (and part of Hamilton, ON). I think the packages without numbers in the title are in the process of being phased out, judging by the fact that they don't show up in the page's sidebar (not in the image). |
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| Telus Internet in British Columbia and Alberta. |
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| Rogers Cable Internet in larger areas of Ontario, Newfoundland, and most of New Brunswick. |
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| Bell Internet in Ontario (lower speeds). Also, Bell's comparison tool is broken and doesn't show the upload speeds despite having a row for it, so I added them in. And another thing, based on what people have posted on the internet, the upload speed on Performance is up to 800 Kbps, not up to 1 Mbps as they falsely advertise. |
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| Bell Internet in Ontario (higher speeds). As I said above, Bell's comparison tool is broken and doesn't show the upload speeds despite having a row for it, so I added them in. |
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| Bell Internet in Quebec (lower speeds). Also, Bell's comparison tool is broken and doesn't show the upload speeds despite having a row for it, and it incorrectly shows the download speed for Essential, so I fixed those. And another thing, based on what people have posted on the internet, the upload speed on Performance is up to 800 Kbps, not up to 1 Mbps as they falsely advertise. |
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| Bell Internet in Quebec (higher speeds). As I said above, Bell's comparison tool is broken and doesn't show the upload speeds despite having a row for it, so I added them in. |
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| Videotron Cable Internet in the main cities of Quebec. |
Here are what I think are the most popular packages for each provider. For Shaw, it's probably High-Speed where the upload speed is 512 Kbps (0.5 Mbps) (the most popular will likely end up being High-Speed 10 after the old packages are phased out). For Telus, it's likely High-Speed Turbo where the upload speed is 1 Mbps. For Rogers, it's Express where the upload speed is 512 Kbps (0.5 Mbps). For Bell, it's Performance/Fibe6/7, where the upload speed is 800 Kbps (0.8 Mbps) or 1Mbps. For Videotron, it's High-Speed where the upload is 1 Mbps.
If you're confused about the terminology, don't worry about it too much and just compare it to my earlier example of how long it would take to post pictures to Facebook. If your upload speed is less than 1Mbps, then it'll take longer to post the pictures than in my example.
As you can tell, many of the available internet packages in Canada have an upload speed below 1 Mbps. In fact 1 Mbps is quite slow for 2012, and Canada is lagging behind quite a bit in terms of upload speeds. Using Netindex as a reference, Canada is in 65th place for upload speeds with an average of 1.87 Mbps. Comparatively, the United States are in 35th place with an average of 3.06 Mbps upload speeds, Sweden is in 15th place with an average of 9.97 Mbps upload speeds, and Japan is in 11th place with an average of 10.7 Mbps upload speeds. The top two are Lithuania which has an average upload speed of 24.74 Mbps, with the top being South Korea having an average upload speed of 27.84 Mbps. Canada is pretty far behind here. On a related note, Canada is in 33rd place for download speeds, having an average download speed of 12.26 Mbps (which I think may be an error, influenced by Rogers and Shaw's speedboost which bumps up the download speed for the first 5 seconds of a download, and also gives false speedtest results).
If you feel that your internet connection as a whole is too expensive or you don't like your provider's customer service, you may want to consider looking for an alternative internet provider.
So, the short reason of why it takes so long to get your pictures or videos to Facebook or Youtube, is that it's a limitation of your internet connection.
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