COVID-19 accelerating rural/urban connectivity divide: CIRA

Rural home internet speeds during the first full month where Canadians shifted to working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic were almost 12 times slower than the median speed for urban Canadians, according to speed test analysis conducted by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. According to results of the CIRA’s Internet Performance Test, performed on 3,280 rural homes and 13,876 urban ones during April, the median home internet download speed in rural Canada decreased to 3.78 Mbps, while the median speed in urban Canada increased to 44.09 Mbps, 11.7 times faster. The median speed for March — where a large number Canadians shifted to working from home in the middle of the month — was 5.42 Mbps in rural Canada, based on 3,217 tests and 26.35 Mbps in urban Canada, where 10,897 connections were tested. The 3.78 Mbps result for April in rural Canada is the lowest one recorded by CIRA over the last 12 months, while the urban Canada speeds were almost nine Mbps faster than the next quickest result, 35.15 Mbps in May 2019. Rural median upload speeds for April were 0.84 Mbps, down from 1.2 Mbps in March, while the median urban upload speed was 8.98 Mbps in April, up from 7.52 MBps in March. CIRA suggested that the urban speed increase could potentially be caused by people switching to better internet plans as they began working and learning from home, an option that is not as readily available in rural Canada. CIRA vice-president of product Dave Chiswell said in a press release the results showed that “rural Canadians are facing serious connectivity challenges right now,” and called on all industry stakeholders to ensure all Canadians had access to speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbpbs upload, the minimum that the CRTC, when it set its universal service objective in 2016, said all Canadians should be able to access. Rural Development Minister Maryam Monsef told The Wire Report on April 29 that the federal government would have more to say about speeding up rural broadband funding “soon,” while the Conservatives called for the government to ensure all Canadians had access to those speeds by 2021. Conservative industry critic Michelle Rempel Garner on Wednesday released 14 recommendations she said would help the government achieve that goal nine years earlier than its current target of 2030. According to the CRTC’s latest Communications Monitoring Report, only 40.8 per cent of rural Canadians had access to an internet service that met the 50/10 Mbps service standard. “The data we released shows a massive gap between the speeds that rural and urban Canadians are receiving—a gap that feels even larger in light of widespread social distancing and working from home,” Chiswell said. “We applaud the government's commitment to helping narrow the broadband gap, and are eager to assist Minister Monsef and her colleagues in getting all Canadians connected as soon as possible.”

COVID-19 accelerating rural/urban connectivity divide: CIRA

Brief | May 8, 2020

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COVID-19 accelerating rural/urban connectivity divide: CIRA

Brief | May 8, 2020

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