Ottawa, ON – April 28, 2016 – New data from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority measures Internet speed and quality
Key findings from the report:
- Upload speeds need more attention: As more users shift from passive consumers to active producers of content, Canadian Internet users should be sure to pay attention to the upload speeds in their community. The use of cloud-based back-up (like Google Drive or OneDrive) and video sharing services (like Periscope or YouTube) require significant upload bandwidth.
- Western cities lag behind: Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal top the list, while Vancouver, Victoria, Surrey, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Regina all landed in the bottom half of the ranking.
- Rural and northern communities need strong services: CIRA’s data only includes rural households that have an Internet connection (an inherent bias of an online test). These tests had an average download speed of 14.81 Mbps, which although seemingly strong is still 24 per cent behind the urban national average. Rural communities are also more likely to experience quality issues such as higher ping and jitter.
- Provincial data exposes a bright spot in Atlantic Canada: Canada’s provinces and territories did not perform equally. New Brunswick leads the way with an average download of 26.98 Mbps and an average upload speed of 12.39 Mbps. The Yukon Territory has the lowest average speeds at 6.68 Mbps.
- Cities do not have homogeneous experience: In parsing out data for one Canadian city, CIRA found that a city’s core can have significantly different results from its suburbs. This data should be of use to municipal officials as they work to understand the dynamics of Internet performance in their jurisdictions.
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Additional resources
- Take the test – Users can test their connection’s performance and help build-out this data set at http://performance.cira.ca.