Nobody talks about upload speed. It makes sense; most of the time, using the internet is about downloading. Watching videos, loading webpages, and listening to music all depend on your download speed. Internet Service Providers tend to avoid advertising upload speed, too.

Once things get interactive, though, upload starts to matter. Things like video calls, voice calls, or sending data of any kind rely on your upload speed. When you’re working from home, you need enough upload speed to ensure that your work programs help you get your job done effectively.

It’s in the Name

Your upload speed is how quickly you can send data out to the internet. As the name suggests, it decides how quickly you can upload files, like when you’re sending an attachment via email or syncing files from your computer to OneDrive. Encompass also falls into this category due to the way it handles sending changes back to the server.

How quickly you can sync files from your computer back to OneDrive is determined by upload speed.

Video and Audio

Upload speed also affects the video and audio data you send out during calls in services like Zoom, RingCentral, and Teams. If you’ve ever seen someone’s video on a call get blurry or choppy, or had their audio stutter or cut out, that was probably due to poor upload speed.

As we covered in a previous article, we recommend a bare minimum upload speed of 12 Megabits per second (Mbps). That speed is only just going to let you get your work done, though. Ideally, you want an upload speed of at least 25 Mbps. You can always go higher than that, too; more speed can only improve your internet experience.

To find out your current speeds, you can run a speed test at a site like https://www.speedtest.net/.

A speed test showing an upload speed of about 40 Mbps, which is a great speed!

A speed test will give you a great idea of your actual speeds. You can use it throughout the day to see if it changes depending on usage in your home or area.

You can also contact your ISP to find out what your current speeds are; just be sure to ask about your upload speed specifically. If you find that your upload speed isn’t all that great, while you’ve got them on the phone, you can look into upgrading your plan for better speeds.

Using the 25 Mbps baseline as a guide, try to find a plan that fits your budget while giving you the best work from home experience possible.