It’s always good to know that you’re getting your money’s worth especially when you’ve worked hard to earn it. Canadians would be happy to know that the majority of broadband Internet services being offered and sold in Canada meet or even exceed the advertised download and upload speeds.
This information comes as a result of a recent broadband performance study conducted by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in cooperation with all major facilities-based providers – Bell, Bell Aliant, Cogeco, Eastlink, MTS, Northwestel, Rogers, Shaw, Telus and Videotron (SaskTel declined participation).
Jean-Pierre Blais, CRTC Chairman, and CEO:
“We are pleased that Canadians now have better insight into the performance, including the actual connection speeds, of the broadband Internet services provided to them by the major ISPs in the country. Based on the preliminary findings, Canadians are receiving the broadband speeds they are paying for. This national project was the first of its kind in Canada, and we are grateful to the volunteers across Canada who participated as well as to the ISPs that partnered with us. It has provided us with information that will help improve broadband policy and will no doubt be valuable during the public hearing in April 2016 to review which telecommunications services Canadians need to participate in the digital economy.”
According to the report, services that used Cable/Hybrid-Fibre Co-Axial (HFC) and Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) technologies delivered download speeds that were in excess to the advertised rates – FTTH services 119% and Cable/HFC services 103%. Most DSL-based services also met or exceeded the advertised rates with the exception to DSL services in the 5-9 Mbps category which only delivered 88%.
This study was conducted last year mostly during the peak usage hours of 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM during weekdays, between October 1, 2015 and November 20, 2015. It’s important to note that even though network connectivity is a very important factor in determining the broadband speeds, other factors such as home WiFi modems/routers and limitation of devices also have an effect on the results.
You can learn more and get detailed information about this study from this link.
As a broadband Internet services subscriber in Canada, I’m happy to see that the government is working together with the telcos to make sure that we’re getting our money’s worth of broadband speeds. My ISP is Rogers and I ran several tests to check our connection using Speedtest.net and I can say that we are getting about the same or faster download and upload speeds.
Anyone here in Canada? For those of you who are from Ontario, which of the Ontario internet providers are you subscribed to? Do you agree with the results of this recent CRTC study? Are you getting the same speeds as advertised by your ISP? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
[image source: flickr.com/photos/diversey]
