According to PCMag, the fastest wireless network in Canada is “clearly Bell.”
In its third iteration of testing Canadian wireless speeds across Canada, PC Mag‘s Sascha Segan trekked across our fine land to test data speeds and determine which Canadian carrier is king. Last year saw a tie between Bell and Rogers, but this time around Bell was crowned champion.
The tests were completed by using both Android and iOS devices with Ookla’s Speedtest.net app between June 1st and September 14th. The carriers tested were “Bell, Eastlink, Ice Wireless, MTS, Rogers, SaskTel, TBayTel, Telus, and Videotron in their home coverage areas only,” but the team “ignored any roaming results, as well as results from Fido, Koodo, and Virgin.” That said, PCMag notes that the sub-brands “performed similarly to their parent companies.”
It should be noted that this report only tested data speeds and not details such as reliability, call quality, or text delivery. In addition, the report was filtered to only show results Category 4 or higher LTE devices only (which are capable of download speeds of 150Mbps).
The report revealed that the Canadian carriers have done a good job at building out LTE networks — specifically LTE Advanced in some regions — and the results “simply blow U.S. carriers away.” From a national carrier perspective, Bell topped Rogers and Telus with an overall Speed Index score of 97, while Rogers and Telus tied at 94. Average download speeds for Bell were 33.51 Mbps, Rogers at 33.86Mbps, and Telus at 32.48. For reference, the average speeds from last year were 23Mbps for Bell, 32.7Mbps for Rogers, and 17.2Mbps for Telus.
Eastlink dominated the East Coast, while other regional carriers such as MTS in Manitoba and SaskTel in Saskatchewan fared well, but were still overshadowed by the BigThree. In Quebec, “Videotron offers the best mobile coverage, speed, and price across Quebec, especially if you get one of its combo deals with your cable TV service.” In addition, the report stated that “Wind is, as always, inexpensive but slow.”
[source] PCMag [/source]
