Asymmetric plans are really disappointing. Back at my family’s residence we have Verizon Fios which only offers [near] symmetric plans (200/200, 400/400c 940/880) which is fantastic. They’re looking to upgrade from our legacy bundle package of 30/30 to gigabit, which is exciting for them.

Where I am, in an urban apartment complex I had two provider choices: Frontier and Optimum. Frontier wired the building, but their plans were ridiculously underwhelming. My Optimum plan is ~$55/m including modem/router for 300/35. Their highest offering for upload seemed to be 45Mbps (or 35, plan descriptions between the site and sales were not consistent).

I’m not in telecom nor a networking expert, but what difficulties are there in offering symmetric plans?

Someone else more knowledgeable will have to expand on this, but I know that on Docsis the lower bands are used for upload and those can carry less signal. Something about those lower bands makes them more advantageous for node > hub communications but exactly what I don’t know.

How many of those offers in the US have traffic limits though?

It's also worth mentioning that there's no "equipment rental" fee on my DOCSIS connection for the cable modem.