Internet speed is a very contentious issue, especially in a country as big and spread out as Canada. While mobile internet quality has been a major concern for many Canadians, fewer people talk about the inequalities between cities and regions when it comes to home internet.
A new report from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority is seeking to identify any problem areas and highlight any improvements that might make Canadians’ home internet experiences better. The report sourced data from 126,000 internet users across Canada, and shows that there’s still lots of work to do to get Canadians across the country the best internet service possible.
Among the important findings from the report, the group says that different regions of Canada have vastly different average internet speeds, including bright areas in Ontario, Montreal, and the Atlantic provinces. On the other hand, Western and Northern Canada suffered from the slowest internet, with the territories’ speeds specifically lagging behind the national average by a whole 25 percent, in addition to worse service overall.
The report also highlighted some concerns even in cities where average internet speeds remain high, in that city cores will have high internet speeds, while suburbs will receive significantly slower internet.
Another point in the report is that while download speeds have been most important to users for surfing the web and streaming video, upload speeds suffer in comparison. This hasn’t been much of a concern until recently, but as social media and video calling are on the rise, outbound traffic is also increasing fast. Online storage and backup like Google Drive and Dropbox are also increasingly important, and those services also require significant upload speeds.
According to Byron Holland, the president and CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the goal of the report is “…to see is a better online Canada. Where Canada not only competes with, but tops the global leaders in access speed, quality, and data sovereignty. CIRA launched the Internet performance test and is beginning a series of stories to educate Canadians, policy makers, and organizations on how the Internet really works so they can make informed decisions and improvements.”
This is certainly a noble goal, and interested users are encouraged to take a connection test at performance.cira.ca to help the group collect more data about Canadian internet speeds.
[source]Newswire[/source]
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