Bell and Telus fastest fibre providers: Opensignal report

According to the analytics firm Opensignal, when it comes to fixed broadband connectivity in Canada BCE Inc. and Telus Corp. offer the highest speeds across most regions of the country. In areas where Bell's and Telus' respective fibre products have overlapping footprints, Bell beats out Telus in terms of speed across a number of different metrics. However in Atlantic Canada, Rogers Communications Inc. customers have the fastest download speeds, beating out both Bell and Bragg Communications Inc.'s Eastlink. The report, published Thursday by the U.K.-based firm, looked at speeds from eight different fixed broadband providers, and assessed them across six criteria in seven different regions of the country. Opensignal used the metrics of broadband success rate, broadband consistent quality, broadband video experience, broadband download speed, broadband peak download speed and broadband upload speed. "In most regions, Bell and Telus Fibre users dominate the results with top scores across most metrics. In Quebec, where both providers' footprints overlap, Bell Fibre outshines Telus Fibre across all six metrics," the report found. In Alberta, Telus "dominates" the other providers, according to the report, with the highest or tied-for-highest speeds across five out of the 6 metrics. The only area in Alberta where Telus did not lead the pack was in broadband download speed, where Shaw Communications Inc. scored highest. The results were similar in British Columbia, where Telus again scored highest on five out of six categories, while Shaw beat Telus out just slightly on broadband download speed. In the east, Bell was the fastest provider in Ontario, leading or tied in all six categories measured by Opensignal. In Quebec, where four companies – Bell, Telus, Quebecor Inc.'s Videotron, and Cogeco Inc. – all offer fibre services, Bell won out in five out of six categories. In the category of broadband success rate – defined by Opensignal as a measure of the average proportion of successfully completed tests relative to all the tests executed for each unique Wi-Fi network on each provider – all four providers in Quebec were in a virtual dead heat. In the Atlantic provinces, where Eastlink competes against Rogers and Bell, broadband consistent quality, broadband video experience, and broadband success rate were relatively comparable across the three providers. Broadband consistent quality in Opensignal's report is a measure of how often users' experience on a network was sufficient to support common applications' requirements. The report defines broadband video experience as a quantification of the quality of video streamed to mobile devices, determined by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's network. In the prairie provinces, Shaw was generally faster than Bell's MTS, while in Saskatchewan Shaw was faster than or tied with Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Co. across all six categories.

Bell and Telus fastest fibre providers: Opensignal report

Brief | April 13, 2023

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Bell and Telus fastest fibre providers: Opensignal report

Brief | April 13, 2023

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